Beirut: Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad has jokingly said that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a pro-Damascus Lebanese newspaper has reported.
The prize, which was given to the global chemical weapons watchdog on Friday, “should have been mine”, Al Assad said, according to Al Akhbar newspaper.
Al Assad made the remark “jokingly”, the daily said, as he commented on the award on Friday of Nobel Peace Prize to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is working in Syria to destroy the Assad regime’s massive chemical arsenal by mid-2014.
Al Akhbar also reported that Al Assad had proposed in 2003 that all countries in the region should hand over all weapons of mass destruction.
But the newspaper did not say when Al Assad made the comments about the Nobel.
Meanwile, Al Assad prayed at a Damascus mosque early on Tuesday morning as Muslims marked the Eid Al Adha holiday, state media said.
State television broadcast images of the president entering the Hassiba mosque and waving to supporters before taking part in prayers.
The prayers were led by Imam Mohammad Tawfiq Al Bouti, the son of Mohammad Al Bouti, a senior pro-regime religious figure who was killed in a bombing at a mosque in March.
Al Assad, who has rarely been seen in public since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, attended prayers at a Damascus mosque on August 8, for the Eid Al Fitr holiday.
At the time, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported shelling in the area where the president had gone to pray, with activists saying opposition fighters had “targeted” his convoy.
More than 115,000 people have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the conflict in March 2011, according to the Britain-based monitoring group.
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