France's Fabius says Syrian regime should be 'smashed fast'

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called Friday for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime to be "smashed fast" as he visited Turkey's largest refugee camp near the border.

"The Syrian regime should be smashed fast," Fabius told reporters. "After hearing the refugees and their account of the massacres of the regime, Mr Bashar al-Assad doesn't deserve to be on this earth."

"It is an operation of destruction of an entire people that he is trying to accomplish," he said.

Fabius made the remarks at a refugee camp near the Oncupinar border crossing in Kilis province, where he met a number of Syrian refugees appealing to France for weapons and aid to fight the Damascus regime.

In response to the demands, the top diplomat said his country was spending efforts in the political and humanitarian fields, but France could not accept continuation of Assad's "massacre."

"The sooner this regime leaves, the better," he said.

The Oncupinar camp is one of several refugee settlements in Turkey's border provinces and houses around 12,000 people in prefabricated buildings.

Turkey is also providing sanctuary to rebel forces made up of army defectors in a separate camp where security is tighter.

Fabius had previously visited Jordan and Lebanon, where he had renewed calls for Assad to go in the face of his regime's relentless onslaught against Syrian civilians and predicted more "spectacular" defections to come soon.

Fabius was referring to the recent defections of Assad's prime minister Riad Hijab and general Manaf Tlass, his childhood friend and the son of a close aide of Assad's father Hafez, who ruled Syria with an iron fist.

The foreign minister, the first to be allowed entry into a Turkish refugee camp, was expected to fly to Ankara later in the day for talks with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu on the Syria crisis.

The high-level clearance into Oncupinar camp, a Turkish diplomat told AFP, was the result of the improvement in French-Turkish ties after a tumultous period during the term of the previous French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Turkey has been one of the main regional powers denouncing Assad's regime, and frequently calls on the international community for financial aid to share the refugee burden.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/frances-fabius-says-syrian-regime-smashed-fast-171354884.html

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