Pope slams West for selling chem weapons to Syria

Pope Francis has condemned the West for selling chemical weapons responsible for thousands of civilian deaths to Syria.
Returning from a three-day trip to Turkey the pope said the Middle East state did not have the ability to manufacture the chemical weapons that were deployed against Syrian civilians last year, adding they must have been supplied them by its 'accusers'.
Nerve agent Sarin, described by chemical weapons experts as one of the 'deadliest agents known to man', has been linked to several attacks during the three-year civil war in Syria.
Both British and the US governments threatened military action against President Bashir al-Assad after an attack in which almost 1,500 people were killed, including 426 children last year but ultimately were defeated by votes in Parliament and the US Congress.
Pope Francis firmly opposed Western intervention in Syria.
Pope Francis told journalists on the plane returning him to Rome: 'Last year between September and December it was said that Syria had chemical weapons. I don't believe that Syria was capable of making chemical weapons. So who could have sold them to them? One of those who accused them. '
Francis condemned arms trafficking as 'terrible' and lamented that it was currently one of the strongest fields of business.
Earlier, Pope Francis said on Sunday that equating Islam with violence was wrong and called on Muslim leaders to issue a global condemnation of terrorism to help dispel the stereotype.
Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, told reporters  that he understood why Muslims were offended by many in the West who automatically equated their religion with terrorism.
"You just can't say that, just as you can't say that all Christians are fundamentalists. We have our share of them (fundamentalists). All religions have these little groups," he said.
The Newsnightprogramme revealed this summer that the UK was the sole supplier of the three key ingredients used to produce sarin; dimethyl phosphate (DMP), trimethyl phosphate (TMP) and hexamine. regarded as the 'building block' of sarin.