(7 Aug 2012) STORYLINE
The Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Dr. Saeed Jalili, held a news conference in Damascus on Tuesday, as he wrapped up a visit which included meetings with the Syrian president Bashar Assad and his foreign minister Walid al-Moallem.
Jalili, whose government remains a strong ally of the Syrian regime, condemned the recent abduction of a group of Iranians in Syria.
A bus filled with 48 Iranian pilgrims was snatched by gunmen in a Damascus suburb on August 4.
Iran's state controlled Press TV blamed "terrorists" for the abduction, echoing language used by the Syrian regime to describe the rebels it has been battling for the past 17 months in an uprising that has claimed 19,000 lives.
"We believe that kidnapping innocent people who had come to Syria to visit holy places and to perform their religious rituals is not acceptable, and no reasonable person could commit such a deed or such an assault."
On Tuesday, Iran's Foreign Ministry said it held the US responsible for the fate of the abducted Iranians.
The abductions threaten to suck Iran deeper into Syria's civil war and the wider political brinkmanship around the region.
Jalili also blamed sanctions against Syria on a "deep-seated hatred" towards the country.
He implied that foreign powers had a role to play in the violence that has characterised the Syrian conflict.
"when we look at the conspiracy that is being hatched against Syria, and all the political and economical sanctions applied against Syria and the suffering caused to the Syrian people because of these sanctions, all that would never have happened if they had not played the role of supporting the resistance."
Jalili described former UN special envoy on Syria Koffi Annan's plan as "a suitable starting point to stop the violence in Syria, and to get back to the state of peace and calm."
Annan resigned as Syria's peace envoy earlier this month after a frustrating, six-month term that saw the conflict in Syria steadily grow worse, with diplomacy failing to bring about even a temporary cease-fire as the country plunged into fully-blown civil war.
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