“When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war, so, we don’t have to discuss what the image in the west before discussing the image in Syria. That’s the question.”

I am not talking about the state or average or common people. I am talking about everybody; because when you close your mind as an official you cannot upgrade and vice versa.

Any cooperation that doesn’t go through the Syrian government is not legal. If it’s not legal, we cannot cooperate with, and we don’t recognize and we don’t accept.

If the American administration want to support Al-Qaeda – go ahead. That’s what we have to tell them, go ahead and support Al-Qaeda, but don’t talk about rebels and free Syrian army.

The armament of the government is legal armament. Any other armament is not legal.

It is natural that we should always expect an Israeli attack, even when it does not threaten.

At the end, I said [chemical weapons] is something not to be discussed with anyone.

Why should you use a term [rebels] in the United States and England and maybe other countries and use another term in Syria ? This is a double standard that we don’t accept.

If you want to talk about mistakes, every country has mistakes, every government has mistakes, every person has mistakes. When you have a war, you have more mistakes. That’s the natural thing.

We are fully free, not partially, fully free, in everything related to the future of Syria.

We’re talking about the responsibility, my responsibility according to the Syrian constitution that said we have to defend ourselves.

We feel pain for every Syrian victim.

Hizbullah is not a militia.

We’re not sure that if there’s chemical weapon used and who used it. We can’t talk about virtual things, we have to talk about facts.

The army is made of the people ; it cannot be made of robots.

We are against any WMD, any weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical or nuclear.

History teaches us that nobody can prevent a resistance group from arming when it has the support of the people.

We made sure that we didn’t talk about India versus Pakistan but about the emotions of people on both sides and how terrorism affects us all.

The issue of terrorism must be dealt with firmly. We must work very hard to avoid loss of life.

The battle against terrorism is not only a military fight but primarily a battle of information.

All Iraqis can unite to defeat terrorism and can unite to rebuild the country.

We must work very hard to avoid civilian casualties. And those terrorists and Baathists are holding the people of Fallujah hostage. We must release the hostages.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of terrorism. And it’s unfortunate.

Winning the war on terrorism will also require a level of moral clarity that can provide a vision for struggling people and nations everywhere.

When the world is at war with terrorism and the United States cannot afford to offend the sensibility of our Turkish ally.