WarSclerotic

Protesters take to streets in Syria after … JPost – Middle East.

  AMMAN – Protesters took to the streets of Damascus suburbs and several cities across Syria on Monday to denounce a speech by President Bashar Assad they said did not meet mass demands for sweeping political change, activists said.

“No to dialogue with murderers,” chanted 300 protesters in the capital’s suburb of Irbin, a witness told Reuters by telephone, with the slogans echoing in the background.

Earlier Monday, Assad gave a speech from a Damascus university, saying an international conspiracy of saboteurs and extremists is to blame for the chaos that has gripped Syria during the three-month anti-regime upheaval.

In a long-awaited speech from Damascus that stretched for well over an hour, Assad said “I don’t think Syria has gone through a period in its history without a conspiracy that was linked to other interests. Conspiracies are like viruses, they increase and multiply and must be eradicated but we can’t become immune to them.”

Assad claimed that around 64,000 armed extremists are responsible for violence against the army and security services, and that “this extremist mindset has tried to infiltrate into Syria and harm the unity of Syria. This mindset has not changed; only the means and the faces have….this is the biggest obstacle to reform, we must contain this mindset and this extremist thinking.”

He also accused his enemies of working to cause “mental sabotage” of the Syrian people, which is “causing people to disrespect the institutions and the nation. Today we have young people, young children growing up with a lack of respect for institutions and hatred of the state. This will be reflected in the future and the price will be high.”

Assad also called for the people of Syria to be patient for reforms to be implemented, saying “we can not just move in one jump, what we are trying to do now we are building the future, the future will be our history and it will impact on the thinking of future generations.

This entry was posted on June 20, 2011 at 3:36 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.