A senior adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad said Thursday her countrymen have no use for the U.N. aid drops that international powers insist are necessary to alleviate a massive humanitarian crisis within the war-torn nation.

The U.N. has decried the situation in Syria as an emergency and in recent weeks considered air drops of food and medical supplies at the urging of the U.S. and the U.K. But to hear the Syrian government's representative tell it, that offer is not only unnecessary, it's insulting.

"The Syrian people are not very happy with the humanitarian assistance. They have never been used to eat[ing] tinned food and macaroni, brought from somewhere," Bouthaina Shaaban, who is currently under U.S. Treasury Department sanctions, told reporters in Washington, D.C., via a video teleconference from Damascus. "Syrian people are used to sweet fruits, and fresh vegetables, and fresh crops that they, themselves grow in Syria."

Reporters asked Shaaban repeatedly about mounting concerns from international aid groups about widespread food shortages and starvation in Syria, particularly in places such as Darayya outside Damascus, which has been cut off from foreign assistance since 2012.

"Darayya is the food basket of Damascus. There is nobody starving in Darayya," Shaaban said, adding later, "The Syrian people are able to feed themselves. By the way, when first baskets – food baskets – used to arrive from the U.N., the Syrian people would cry and never accept to take a food basket because they have never accepted aid from anybody. Syria has never taken aid, it has never taken a loan from other countries. Syrian people are very proud. This does not mean we aren't trying our best to make everything arrive for our citizens."

Thursday's unusual press conference was organized by the Florida-based nonprofit group Global Alliance for Terminating ISIS/Al-Qaeda, or GAFTA, and frequently became heated, with representatives from Syrian aid groups loudly accusing Shaaban of manufacturing facts. Some took particular ire over her refusal to differentiate between terrorist groups, like the Islamic State group or the Nusra Front, and members of the opposition forces, which Shaaban dismissed as terrorists, including those backed by the U.S. She also refused to say whether forces loyal to the regime would not stop employing barrel bombs against Syrians, dismissing generally claims made by journalists as rumors and saying the central government in Damascus "believes in stopping all this war in Syria."

Shaaban also questioned the international focus on aid relief to Syria.

"Air drops or no air drops, or trucks on the road, this is something that is being discussed between the U.N. and the Syrian government, and this is not very important to us. The most important thing is to uproot terrorism," Shaaban said.