Syria regrets UN chief civil war warning
2012-05-31 21:33
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Ban KI-Moon
As a child in South Korea, Ban Ki-moon wrote a letter to the UN secretary-general regarding the...
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Damascus - Syria said on Thursday that it regretted Ban Ki-moon's warning of a "catastrophic civil war", saying the UN chief had become a "herald" of such a conflict.
"It is regrettable that the secretary general of the United Nations has departed from his mission of maintaining peace and security in the world to become a herald of civil war," foreign ministry spokesperson Jihad Makdisi told a Damascus news conference.
Ban said earlier that massacres of the sort seen last week near the central town of Houla, in which at least 108 people were killed, "could plunge Syria into a catastrophic civil war, a civil war from which the country would never recover".
Ban's remarks came amid mounting international outrage over the massacre in which 49 children were among the dead, according to a body count by UN military observers.
Makdisi was speaking after General Kassem Jamal Sleiman, head of Syria's official inquiry into the incident, said that it was carried out by "armed groups" and not by government forces as has been widely reported, including by UN agencies.
