Assad Says Syria 'Very Transparent' with U.N.-OPCW Team

As a U.N. mission to destroy Syria's chemical weapons got underway Sunday, Syrian President Bashar Assad admitted in an interview with Germany's Spiegel news magazine that his government had made "mistakes" in the country's brutal conflict.

But he again denied that his forces used chemical weapons in an August 21 attack that led to threats of a U.S. strike and eventually the U.N. resolution requiring Syria to turn over its arsenal.

A team of disarmament experts from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) based in The Hague arrived in Damascus on Tuesday and began their mission on Sunday.

In the interview published Sunday by Spiegel, Assad said his government was being "very transparent" with the U.N.-OPCW team.

"The experts can go to every site. They are going to get all the data from us, they will verify them, and then they can make a judgment about our credibility," he said.

He also dismissed assertions by U.S. President Barack Obama that Syrian forces carried out a chemical attack that killed hundreds in the Damascus suburbs in August.

"We have not used chemical weapons. This is wrong," Assad told Spiegel.

"And so is the picture you're drawing of me, of someone who kills his own people... Obama presents not a single piece of evidence, not a shred of evidence. He has nothing to offer but lies."

Assad also acknowledged that mistakes had been made in responding to the uprising that began in March 2011.

The uprising initially took the form of peaceful protests against the Assad family's 40-year reign but escalated into a civil war after government forces fired on demonstrators.

"Whenever political decisions are made, mistakes happen," Assad said.

"Personal mistakes by individuals happened. We all make mistakes. Even a president makes mistakes," he added. He insisted, however, that "our fundamental decisions were right."

Asked if the opposition has sole responsibility for massacres, and if his forces were all innocent, Assad said "reality is not black and white."

"You can't just absolutely say 'they carry 100 percent of the blame and we carry zero'," he said.

"But basically it's correct that we are defending ourselves."

The magazine also reported on Sunday that German intelligence services believe Iran has allowed Assad's regime to station fighter jets on its territory to protect them from foreign attack.

More than 115,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

Two million people have become refugees and millions more have been displaced inside Syria.

As the fighting continued, U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Brahimi told France's TV5 Monde that he hoped the two sides would agree to attend a peace conference in Geneva in mid-November "without preconditions."

"We are going to Geneva without preconditions. Mr. Bashar Assad cannot say that he does not want to negotiate with 'X' or 'Y' and it's the same thing for the opposition," Brahimi said.