Assad admits Hezbollah involvement in Syria

AMMAN, April 21 (KUNA) -- Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad admitted Tuesday the involvement of the Lebanese Hezbollah group in the ongoing Syrian civil conflict.
"Every country, every government in the world, every state, has the right to invite any other country or party or organization to help in any domain, while no country has the right to intervene without invitation. So, we invited Hezbollah," the Syrian President said in an interview with France 2 TV.
On Iran's involvement, he confessed the presence of Iranian commanders and military experts, but denied the participation of Iranian troops in the fighting.
"No, no, they (Iranians) don't fight. We have regular relations with Iran for more than three decades. We have commanders, officers coming and going between the two countries based on the cooperation that existed between us for a long time. This is different from fighting," he said.
The embattled President also dismissed reports about Syrian government forces use of chemical weapons in attacking opposition-held areas in Idlib.
"No, this is another fake narrative by the Western governments. Why? Because we have two factories of chlorine. One of them is closed for a few years now, it's not used anyway, and the other one is in the northern part in Syria, which is the most important factory than the first one. It's on the Turkish border, it's under the control of the terrorists for two years.
"So, the chlorine in Syria is under the control of the rebels. This is first. Second, this is not a WMD, it's not a weapon of mass destruction. The regular armaments that we have are more influential than chlorine, so we don't need it anyway." He denied reports that his regime was behind the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
"But ISIL was created in Iraq in 2006 under the supervision of the Americans. I'm not in Iraq and I wasn't in Iraq. I wasn't controlling Iraq. The Americans controlled Iraq, and ISIL came from Iraq to Syria." (end) tk.ibi