BEIRUT, Lebanon, April 18 (UPI) -- The Syrian government hasn't received formal complaints about cross-border security incidents in Lebanon, Syria's ambassador to Lebanon said.
The Lebanese government this week said it was filing a formal complaint against Syria at the Arab League. A Syrian rocket attack last weekend left one person dead in the border town of al-Qasr.
"I have received in recent months more than 24 memos but not one of them was a complaint," Syrian Ambassador Ali Abdel-Karim Ali was quoted by The Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon as saying. "They are part of a cooperative information exchange between the two countries, (and it will continue) as long as there are terrorists at our common and overlapping borders."
Syria had warned it would respond to any cross-border aggression. Recent attacks were said to target smuggling routes, though the Lebanese government said no military targets were hit.
Syrian President Bashar Assad made a comparison Wednesday to U.S. support for mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980s to the geopolitical posturing over the Syrian civil war.
"The West has paid heavily for funding al-Qaida in its early stages," a CNN translation read. "Today it is doing the same in Syria, Libya and other places, and will pay a heavy price in the heart of Europe and the United States."
Some of the rebel movements in Syria are allied with al-Qaida.
