Damascus Envoy Stresses Morsi’s Exclusion From Syria Contact Group

The Syrian envoy to Tehran said a contact group proposed by Cairo for the settlement of the Syrian crisis should not include the Egyptian President due to Mohammad Morsi’s flagrantly interfering remarks on Syria at the last week summit meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran.

“The Egyptian president’s speech in the Tehran summit was not balanced and his statements put him outside the framework of any plan dealing with the settlement of the problems in Syria,” Syrian Ambassador to Tehran Hamid Hassan said during an address at Tehran’s Sharif Industrial University on Tuesday.

“Morsi clearly interfered in Syria’s internal affairs through his speech in the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit (in Tehran),” he added.

Earlier, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mualem also criticized Morsi’s stance on developments in Syria, calling it “clear interference” in his country’s internal affairs.

“Mr. Morsi went beyond the Non-Aligned Movement’s norm and interfered in the internal affairs of a NAM member state … he spoke like a (political) party chief not like a NAM president,” Mualem told Al Alam TV network on Thursday.

In his address to the inaugural session of the NAM heads-of-state summit in Tehran Morsi voiced support for what he called “the struggle of the Syrian people against an oppressive regime”.

His remarks in Tehran came after his statement during the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which was held on August 14-15 in Mecca, and Morsi proposed the formation of a contact group, including Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on the situation in Syria.

Farsnews