Assad also denounced the Arab League, which sent a team of observers into Syria in late December.
By BASSEM MROUE and ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY
Associated Press
BEIRUT — By turns defiant and threatening, President Bashar Assad vowed Tuesday to use an “iron hand” to crush what he called the terrorists and saboteurs behind Syria’s 10-month-old uprising in which thousands of people have been killed.
In his first speech since June, Assad showed a steely confidence in the face of the uprising, one of the bloodiest of the Arab Spring. But opponents called it a rambling address by a leader who is dangerously out of touch.
Assad repeated his past claims that a foreign conspiracy and terrorists are driving the revolt, not peaceful protesters seeking to reform the country.
“We will not be lenient with those who work with outsiders against the country,” Assad said in a nearly two-hour speech at Damascus University in a conference hall packed with cheering supporters. He also issued a veiled threat against those who have yet to choose sides.
“Those who stand in the middle are traitors,” Assad said, flanked by Syrian flags. “There is no alternative.”
The conflict in Syria is entering a new and heightened phase, with army defectors and some members of the opposition increasingly turning their weapons on government targets. The regime, in turn, has intensified an already deadly military assault, and a U.N. official said Tuesday that about 400 people have been killed in the last three weeks alone, on top of an earlier U.N. estimate of more than 5,000 dead since March.
Since Dec. 23, three mysterious blasts have struck the capital, killing scores of people in the kind of violence more commonly seen in neighboring Iraq. It’s unclear who is behind the bombings, which the regime said were suicide attacks.
The regime has blamed “terrorists” for the explosions, saying they proved that Syria was fighting armed gangs. But the opposition accuses forces loyal to the regime of carrying out the attacks as a way to tarnish the uprising.
Assad also denounced the Arab League, which sent a team of observers into Syria in late December.