The Syrian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council on Monday to “force armed militant groups to leave Syria's cities and end their terrorist activity.”
In a letter to the UN Security Council, the ministry called the western stance on Syria “hypocritical,” saying the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were part of a “conspiracy against Syria.”
“It is regrettable that those who claim to care about Syria have never urged terrorist organizations to stop armed attacks and join the political process proposed by the UN and approved by Syria,” the document says.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department’s spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Monday that Washington would expand non-military aid to the Syrian opposition.
“There is serious, sustained, increasingly capable, increasingly well-organized opposition to this regime because they want change. They don't want to live under this kind of a brutal regime that would fire on its own people,” Nuland told a press briefing.
Since March 2011, the Syrian conflict has claimed 14,000-20,000 lives, according to estimates by Syrian opposition groups. The West is pushing for President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, while Russia and China are trying to prevent outside interference in Syria saying the Assad regime and the opposition are both to blame for the bloodshed.
