I USE CHEMICA

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad has launched a furious attack on Britain, America and their allies, accusing them of deliberately prolonging the civil war in Syria.

Dismissing Theresa May as a colonialist and a liar, the Syrian leader claims Britain even helped stage April’s notorious chemical attack in the suburb of Douma and that its actions are giving support to the Islamic State terror group.

Today, in a rare and defiant interview, a man widely regarded as a pariah for his repressive regime – and widespread accusations that he has used chemical weapons – refuses to accept an iota of blame.

Instead, he places responsibility for the duration of the seven-year conflict squarely at the feet of Britain and America. Western powers, he says, should get out of Syria and allow the bloodshed to end.

Assad is in an outspoken mood – and has good reason to be confident. Today, for the first time in six years, his forces are in full control of the Syrian capital while, thanks to the support of Russian and Iranian allies, rebel fighters and IS are firmly in retreat.

‘I have always said that in less than a year we can solve this conflict, it’s not complicated,’ he tells me. ‘What has made it complicated is the external interference. The more we advance, the more support terrorists have from the West.

‘So, we think the more advances

‘The UK supported a branch of Al-Qaeda’

we make politically and militarily, the more that the West, especially the US, UK, and France, will try to prolong it and make the solution farther from the Syrians.’

Today – in his first interview with a British journalist since 2015 – we meet not in the main presidential palace but in a sitting room at the smaller Al-Muhajireen Palace, a relatively modest building in the heart of Damascus. Assad often works here and lives nearby.

Half a million Syrians have been killed since the conflict began in 2011, while 11 million have been forced from their homes in a country whose population stood at 23 million when the conflict began.

Silence has finally replaced the distant thuds of bombing and the roar of fighter jets above Damascus’s suburbs.

Yet Assad’s success on the battlefield has done nothing to repair his standing in the West – not merely as an autocrat, with hundreds of Syrians killed and tortured, but as a man resorting to war crimes to cement his grasp on power. Is his pariah reputation justified?

Assad, in the same measured replies, claims that the support for him says otherwise. ‘The story you’re talking about... that this is a bad president; he’s killing his own people, and the world is against him,’ he says. ‘But he’s been in his position for seven years while he’s fighting everyone in this world.

‘Can you convince your readers of this? It’s not logical. It’s not realistic. This president is in his position because he has the support of his own people.

‘We are fighting the terrorists and those terrorists are supported by the British Government, the French government, the American and their puppets.’

It is certainly quite a change for a man who was once embraced by the world as a young cosmopolitan leader when, at the age of 34, he became president.

The latest atrocity levelled against the Syrians was a suspected chemical attack on April 7 in Douma, the last rebel-held town in the eastern Ghouta region.

According to reports from the White Helmets, a controversial voluntary organisation, and rebels from Jaish al-Islam, a coalition of Islamist fighters, the Syrian military dropped bombs containing chlorine from helicopters.

The reports suggested that as many as 42 were killed with scores of further casualties. Such claims were supported by videos uploaded by the White Helmets, who operate in rebel-controlled Syria, showing images of young children, allegedly choking, being hosed down with water.

Yet according to Assad it is a pure hoax, a deliberate piece of fake news staged by Britain, France and America in order to justify the later airstrikes. ‘The UK publicly supported the White Helmets that are a branch of AlQaeda,’ he says.

‘We consider the White Helmets to be a PR stunt by the UK. So yes, definitely, it was staged by these three countries together and the UK is involved.’

Today he says no such attack took place, and cites the evidence of Western journalists who visited the area and Syria’s own intelligence information.

‘It was a lie. After we liberated that area our information confirmed the attack did not take place,’ he adds. ‘The British government should prove with evidence that the attack happened, and then they should prove who is responsible. This did not happen.’

Britain, America and their allies, in reply, say the authenticity of information on the alleged attack is unassailable.

Following the episode, the US, Britain and France launched airstrikes against Syrian research, storage and military targets to punish Assad for ‘persistent violations’ of international law.

Not, says Assad, that Theresa May is in any position to lecture other world leaders. ‘Britain and