Brussels, 06/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - The commander-in-chief of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Salim Idriss, once again called on the Europeans to lift their arms embargo. During a press conference in Brussels he said that, “we have small arms and some small arms ammunition which is not enough for us and which does not enable us to challenge the Syrian war machine supported by Iran and Russia, which is why we are appealing for the arms embargo on Syria to be ended because we are the first to suffer from it… We would like it to be lifted because it is being imposed on the victims”. According to Idriss, the FSA have not yet received arms from abroad and the only weapons it has come from combat against the regime and the black market. He said that 250,000 insurgents were part of the Free Syrian Army, “which was short of weapons and ammunition”. He said that another 200,000 insurgents were ready to join the fight. He explained that with weapons, equipment and munitions, “we will be able to impose an air exclusion zone ourselves and face down the Syrian army”. Idriss explained that, “if we have the weapons we need, we'd be able to bring down the regime in less than a month”.
Faced with European misgivings about supplying weapons, he explained that he did not completely agree that more arms meant more blood on Syrian soil. He said that, “the regime is not respecting the embargo because it is receiving weapons from Russia and Iran, we are suffering from the embargo and we don't have the means to defend ourselves”. The commander-in-chief provided assurances that the weapons would not end up in the hands of terrorist groups. “We are prepared to provide the necessary assurances to control weapons distribution and prepared to hand in weapons after the regime falls”. He explained that the FSA had a well-organised command structure and that, “the leadership receives arms and they are numerically registered”, then distributed.
Idriss also warned against the fact that the al Nasra group, considered a terrorist outfit by the US and which accounted for 2.3% of combatants (5,000 combatants in the country, of which 4,500 were Syrian) had sufficient resources and that certain people therefore preferred to join them than the FSA. Whilst explaining that, al Nasra was not operating under the leadership of the FSA, “we are not against it taking part in the combat operations”.
The commander said that he considered that there was an increasing Shiite strategy to create a region under Shiite influence and Iranian leadership with Iraq and denounced the interference of Hezbollah in the conflict (our translation throughout). (CG/transl.fl)