Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, has joked that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize after it was awarded to the international weapons watchdog currently destroying his regime's massive chemical arsenal.
The prize, which was given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday, "should have been mine," he said.
The remark, which the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted, was made "jokingly" during a recent meeting with visitors at the presidential palace, the newspaper said.
However, it might be viewed as inappropriate when uttered by a president whose civil war has already cost more than 115,000 lives. A chemical weapons attack in Damascus in August, widely blamed on the Syrian government, reportedly killed more than 1,200 people. » | Ruth Sherlock, Beirut | Monday, October 14, 2013
