"Israel will pay the price for invading Syrian airspace,"
warned Imad Moustapha, Syria's Ambassador to the US, in an interview published in Newsweek Magazine, Saturday.
"The Israelis didn't bomb anything.
When they were detected by our defense systems and we started firing at them, they dumped fuel and
turned around," he said, adding that the Israeli bombs
dropped by the Israeli Air Force, landed in open areas without causing any damage.
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Responding to the reports saying that the IAF was after a nuclear power plant, built with Syrian-North Korean cooperation,
Moustapha said: "these are ridiculous claims. Syria does
not have nuclear facilities.
"This is a familiar game," he added. "There were those who said that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were smuggled into Syria. This is nothing new. We hear stories like that all the time."
Syria, said Moustapha, is one of the few friends North Korea has in the world, adding that while on friendly terms, the two states merely share commerce relations.
As for the rumors of an arms deal between the two, Moustapha simply said "I leave these kinds of things to the military experts. I am not one."
Israel, he added, has made a serious mistake by invading Syrian airspace: "Over the past three months Israel has been sending us calming messages, saying it has no interest in escalating the relations between the two countries and then it sends its fighter jets into Syria – that is a serious provocation.
"If the Israelis think they can do whatever they like, they are sorely mistaken, as they were last summer," he said, adding. "Israel's actions will have their consequences. Israel will pay"
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