DAMASCUS, Syria, May 17 (UPI) -- Syrian President Bashar Assad says he faces no true domestic opposition and violence in his country is the work of foreign-backed terrorists and mercenaries.
"There are foreign mercenaries, some of them still alive," he said in an interview on Russian state-owned news channel Rossiya-24. "They are being detained and we are preparing to show them to the world."
Assad accused the West of contemptuous disregard of the alleged terrorists, saying leaders focused solely on regime actions, which he said were strictly defensive.
"They only talk about violence, violence on the government side. There is not a word about the terrorists," he said. "We are still waiting."
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Assad said he had no plans to change his hard-line response to the uprising, even after agreeing to an April 12 United Nations and Arab League cease-fire, which regime and rebel forces are reported to have repeatedly violated.
He said international calls for political reforms ignore that his country faces a systematic foreign-backed use of terror as a means of coercion.
"We have an acute problem with terrorism. Terrorists don't care about reform -- they are not fighting for reform," he said in the English-language interview, which the network dubbed into Russian and broadcast Wednesday, a day after it was recorded.
Russia is Syria's top ally.
The Syrian opposition maintains the Assad regime persists in labeling all opponents terrorists to justify its armed crackdown and to prevent the jelling of any non-violent protest movement that could bring about the government's downfall.
Assad alleged the vast majority of Syrians supported his regime and its plans for reform, which The New York Times said he promised as early as 2001, a year after he inherited the presidency from his father, Hafez Assad, who ruled Syria for three decades until his death in 2000.
"The polling stations reflect the opinions of the people," Assad said, referring to May 7 parliamentary elections that indicated the ruling Baath Party and its handpicked opposition captured two-thirds of the Parliament's 250 seats.
"The results show that the Syrian people support the course toward the reforms that were announced about a year ago, and most support the system," Assad said.
The elections were boycotted in many cities -- an act Assad said discredited the opposition Syrian National Council.
"To call for boycotting the elections -- that's the equivalent of calling for a boycott of the people," Assad said. "And how can you boycott the people who you say you represent?"
Assad warned leaders of nations allegedly supporting the opposition to think twice because they might face similar upheavals.
"For the leaders of these countries, it's becoming clear that this is not [an Arab] Spring but chaos, and as I have said, if you sow chaos in Syria you may be infected by it yourself," he said.
Assad, 46, acknowledged that tightening Western economic sanctions and other punitive measures had created temporary difficulties for Syria.
But he said Syria had many non-Western friends.
"We can find alternatives that let us overcome these difficulties," he said. "Europe and the United States don't make up the entire world."
