Saudi FM: Syria now occupied land

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Tuesday that Syrian Presidet Bashar al-Assad's addition of Hezbollah and Iranian fighters to the battlefield is a critical turn of events that cannot be ignored. Syria is now an occupied land — a development that requires speedy action by the international community, he said during a press conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday. Prince al-Faisal added that Saudi Arabia "cannot be silent" about Iranian intervention and called for a resolution to ban arms flows to the Syrian government. "Syria is facing two things -unprecedented genocide and a foreign invasion," al-Faisal said. al-Faisal said the world's top oil exporter "cannot be silent" at the intervention of Iran and Hezbollah in the Syrian conflict and renewed calls to arm the opposition and bar weapons sales to President Assad. "The most dangerous development is the foreign participation, represented by Hezbollah and other militias supported by the forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard," he said. "There is no logic that allows Russia to publicly arm the Syrian regime and the foreign forces that support it," he added. "We do not want this to be a wider war," Kerry said. "We will continue to provide assistance to the Syrian military coalition and to the Syrian opposition in the interim. Because we do not believe it is appropriate for the Assad regime to have invited the Iranians and Hezbollah to cross international lines and to have their fighters on the ground. There are no United States fighters. There are no Saudi fighters. There are no Qatari fighters on the ground.