The president of Syria has said that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize - a comment likely to raise eyebrows around the world.
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.
The OPCW and the United Nations have a team of 60 experts and support staff, based in Damascus, working to destroy the country's chemical stockpiles. The arsenal is reportedly the largest in the Middle East, and the OPCW hopes to destroy it all by 2014. It is the first time that the body has attempted such a project in a war zone.
Staff of international and local organisations increasingly have become targets for assassinations and kidnappings as the war drags towards its third year.
Source: The Telegraph
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