Barney Porter reported this story on Monday, October 31, 2011 12:30:00

ELEANOR HALL: Syria's president used a rare interview on the weekend to warn the west not to intervene in his country.



Bashar al-Assad said foreign intervention in Syria would cause an "earthquake" across the region and create another Afghanistan.



President Assad made the comments in his first interview with the western media since the uprising against his regime began in March.



Overnight, Arab ministers held a new round of talks aimed at ending the violence amid reports that almost 100 Syrians died in weekend clashes.



Barney Porter has the latest.



BARNEY PORTER: The president's reported words were direct.



BASHAR AL-ASSAD (translated): Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the fault line, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake -- do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans? Any problem in Syria will burn the whole region. If the plan is to divide Syria, that is to divide the whole region.



BARNEY PORTER: The president was speaking in Damascus to Andrew Gilligan, from Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.



Mr GillIgan has told the BBC the president had a reasonable tone in his voice as he uttered that warning, that he was generally relaxed and there hadn't been a strong security presence.



But he couldn't say how much of it was a show.



ANDREW GILLIGAN: Look, I don't know whether how much of it is real and how much of it isn't. He does apparently live in a fairly ordinary house in a street albeit guarded by other people.



He doesn't, I think most people agree, even the opposition agree that he is not a kind of Gaddafi-like figure with vast palaces all over the place but of course they say what does that matter. He has killed 3,000 innocent civilians.



BARNEY PORTER: And Mr Gillegan says he put that claim directly to the president.



ANDREW GILLIGAN: I said look, you know, people in Homs simply do not accept what you are saying about reform. You are not, they say you have got blood on your hands and he didn't get angry and sort of throw me out of the room but he didn't give any ground on political reform either.



One of the things that people have been calling for, that some of the moderate opposition have been calling for anyway is a repeal of article 8 of the Syrian constitution which says that the Ba'ath Party, Assad's party must lead and without that no reforms of electoral or no reforms of party law which are two of the things he has done have much meaning. He didn't give very much ground on article 8.



BARNEY PORTER: Andrew Tabler is an author on Syria, and someone who's also met president Assad.



ANDREW TABLER: I think it is just rhetoric in the sense that what would cause this chaos that he is talking about is not western intervention. Western intervention is not just going to come in of itself, it is going to come in response to his regime's continued crackdown on protesters which are driving people to begin to pick up arms and the conflict could take on a sectarian nature.



Now that could spread in the region but blaming this on the west or some kind of threat of western intervention is just more Assad nonsense.



BARNEY PORTER: Jerry Lewis is the London correspondent of Israel Radio. He sees more than just rhetoric.



JERRY LEWIS: It's a worry. He's got the ability to disrupt the region. There are signs of it already with both the Lebanon, with the northern border of Syria and Turkey. The guy has got a button which he can press when he wants if his regime is under fire. Obviously a lot of it is to do with directing attention away from his domestic agenda.



BARNEY PORTER: The interview came as the Arab League stepped up its mediation efforts to stop the reported violence in Syria.



After another meeting in Doha overnight, Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, said the league had now proposed a plan of "concrete steps" to end the bloodshed and expected president Assad to respond by tomorrow.



HAMAD BI JASSIM AL-THANI (translated): The meeting was serious and frank. We reached a proposal that deals with all issues. The Syrians said they will give their answers to it tomorrow.



We hope we get an answer from our Syrian brothers but what is more important that the answer is the implementation of any agreement and this is the main point. I can't say what the paper has until we get a yes or no from the Syrian government.



BARNEY PORTER: Syrian human rights groups say in the latest violence, more than a dozen people were killed by snipers or machine-gun fire in the flashpoint central province of Homs - up to 20 Syrian soldiers were killed and more than 50 others wounded in clashes with presumed army deserters while another 10 security agents and a deserter were killed in a bus ambush.



ELEANOR HALL: Barney Porter there.