Shaaban: Scud Missiles Transfer 'Ridiculous Lie'

26/04/2010 Syrian President Bashar Assad’s adviser Buthaina Shaaban said that the “rumors circulated through Israeli President Shimon Peres’s comments in which he cited some media outlets with ties with the Mossad, over the Scud missiles’ transfer to Hezbollah from Syria, as well as the US official reaction, brought back to memory the picture of former Defense Minister Colin Powell at the UNSC in 2003, when he held a small bottle and claimed that bacterial weapons as much as the substance in the bottle could put the lives of millions of people at risk, and then claimed that Iraq undoubtedly possesses biological and chemical weapons.”

In an article published in the Syrian “Tishreen” newspaper, Shaaban said that “days after Peres announced his lie, one of his ministers rushed to threat Syria using James Backer’s words about attacking the country to destroy its bridges, roads, and electric power plants to return Syria to the stone age.”

She stressed the report about the Scud missiles was a ridiculous blatant lie. “Scud missiles are dozens of meters long and they need very big trucks to transport them. No country as small as Lebanon can hide such missiles especially when Israeli reconnaissance planes are constantly present in its airspace.”

Shaaban explained that circulating such lies raises doubts about the real intentions behind them, “particularly as lies have been supported by pictures, as it usually happens, during the transport phase.”

The Syrian president’s adviser criticized US Assistant Secretary of State Jeffery Feltman saying that “even without evidence, Feltman announced that the US will consider any Scud missile transfer from Syria to Hezbollah as very dangerous act adding that all options will remain at the table to press Damascus to stop.”
“Feltman did not determine whether the US had verified the alleged transfer or not. What’s important for him is to reiterate the Israeli position,” Shaaban said.

She also tackled US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments in which the top US diplomat expressed her deep concern about the Scud missiles’ transfer and then linked Washington’s dispatch to its envoy to Syria as a tool that gives the US administration more influence and more in-depth analyses and data about Syria’s behavior and intentions. “The comments by Feltaman, Clinton, and other US officials echo Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli extremists’ stances pertaining to Syria. They are like parrots, always repeating Israeli lies regardless of whether they are exposed or not,’ Shhaban said.

She added that the “Scud lie came to give the necessary political umbrella to the Obama administration’s failure to face the stubbornness of Netanyahu’s extremist government, which turned down all US calls to stop settlement building...It also aims at undermining the positive development in US-Syrian ties under Obama.”

Shaaban concluded that “the world realizes that the Zionist entity is the enemy to peace in the Middle East, the promoter of barbaric wars against Arabs, and the obstacle that is impeding a stable relationship between the US and the Arab and Islamic Worlds.”


River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian