Pope Francis has suggested the blame for thousands of civilian deaths to Syria lies with foreign powers which provided the Assad regime with chemical weapons.
Returning from his three-day trip to Turkey the Pope said the Middle East state did not have the ability to manufacture weapons deployed against Syrian civilians last year. He said the weapons had been supplied to the regime by its "accusers".
Francis opposed military action against President Bashir Assad by British and the US governments last year following an attack using deadly nerve agent sarin in which almost 1,500 people are thought to have been killed, including 426 children. The regime denied responsbility for the attacks and Russia claimed they had been carried out by anti-Assad rebels.
The Pope told journalists on the plane returning to Rome on Sunday night: "I don’t believe that Syria was capable of making chemical weapons. So who could have sold them to them? One of those who accused them?"
Former Foreign Minister William Hague admitted as he left office earlier this year that in the 1980s Britain sold Syria precursor chemicals that Damascus later used to manufacture sarin.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia have also been fingered for attempting to procure sarin precursors to bring about an attack that would provoke a US intervention.
Speaking to journalists on the plane Francis condemned arms trafficking, lamenting that it was currently among the strongest businesses today. He said we are today "living through a third world war", behind which lay "commercial interests".
Francis said he had wanted to go to a camp in Turkey to meet refugees of the Syrian war, and that he had wanted to go to Iraq but was not permitted to because of security.
He also confirmed that he had felt compelled to pray while at the Blue Mosque – for peace.
Francis said he used the three-day visit to urge Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to condemn terrorist violence carried out in the name of Islam.
A strong condemnation of terrorism from Muslim leaders would help its followers worldwide, he said.
But it was wrong to equate Islam with terrorism "just as it is wrong to say that all Christians are fundamentalists," he said.
Above: During his visit to Turkey, Francis met Iraqi children displaced by war. Photo: CNS
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