US to blame for attack on its embassy: Assad

BERLIN, Sep 24: The United States and its policies are to blame for a recent failed attack on the today US embassy in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was quoted on Sunday as saying in a German magazine.

Four Syrians tried to blow up the embassy on September. 12 but the plot failed after Syrian guards killed three of the assailants in a shootout. The fourth man later died of his wounds.

''This seems to have been the background of the attack, a reaction to America's policy in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan,'' Assad was quoted by Der Spiegel weekly as saying.

Relations between the United States and Syria have long been strained. The United States has designated Syria as a ''state sponsor of terrorism'' because of its support for Hizbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militant groups.

Syria's 40-year-old president was asked why the United States should be considered at fault for an attack that Assad said appeared to have been carried out by Syrians.

''Because they contribute to hopelessness here, to silencing dialogue between cultures,'' he said.

Assad said data recovered from the computers of the militants who carried out the attacks on the US embassy and information gathered in their environments indicated that they were isolated young men, al Qaeda sympathisers from the suburbs of Damascus who called Osama bin Laden ''the lion of Islam''.

After the attacks of September. 11, 2001, Syria and the United States intensified their cooperation on security issues and ''together saved many American lives'', Assad said.

''Then the Iraq war emerged and America began to make many mistakes,'' he said.

Assad said he had warned the United States that it would win the war in Iraq but would then sink into a quagmire.

''It's turned out worse than I expected,'' he said.

REUTERS