(Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied that he was behind a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people and said evidence was not conclusive that there had been such an attack, CBS reported on Sunday on its news program “Face the Nation.”
“There has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people,” CBS reported Assad said in an interview conducted in Damascus.
The full interview will air on the CBS network and PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show on Monday. Rose said he met with Assad in Damascus. The CBS “Face the Nation” report was a summary of the interview and did not contain any audio or video of Assad.
Assad spoke as the Obama administration was pressing its case in the United States for congressional authorization of a U.S. strike against Syria in response to the August 21 sarin gas attack that Washington said killed more than 1,400 Syrians, including several hundred children.
The Obama administration has accused Assad’s forces of carrying out the attack. Assad has blamed the rebels.