Syria late Monday said it will not accept a chemical weapons team proposed earlier by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to check whether chemical weapons have been used in Syria, DPA reported.
"Syria regrets that Ban Ki-moon has yielded to the pressures practiced by countries known for their support to the Syrian bloodshed in order to divert the consultations in this regard from their real context," the state-run SANA news agency quoted a foreign ministry source as saying.
Syria had originally requested the inspection. The source accused the UN chief of requesting "additional tasks" for the UN team to deploy in all Syrian territories and said that "this contradicts the Syrian request from the UN and indicates the presence of hidden intentions which clearly violates Syria's sovereignty."
The source added that Syria cannot accept such "manoeuvres" by the UN, "taking into consideration the real negative role which it played in Iraq that paved the way for the US invasion" of that country in 2003.