Syrian Minister Invokes Sept. 11 to Accuse U.S. of Hypocrisy Seeking to rebut Syria's political opposition and its outside supporters, the Syrian foreign minister on Monday equated his country's brutal conflict to the Sept. 11 attacks and accused the United States of hypocrisy. "The people of New York have witnessed the devastations of terrorism, and were burned with the fire of extremism and bloodshed, the same way we are suffering now in Syria," he said. How can some countries, hit by the same terrorism we are suffering now in Syria, claim to fight terrorism in all parts of the world, while supporting it in my country? The assertions by the foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, were denounced by the United States. In a statement issued afterward, Erin Pelton, a spokeswoman for the United States Mission, called Mr. Moallem's remark "as disingenuous as it is offensive." She also said, "The fact that the Syrian regime has shelled schools and hospitals and used chemical weapons on its own people demonstrates that it has adopted the very terrorist tactics that it today decried." The only positive remarks about the United States in the speech by Mr. Moallem were in his endorsement of efforts made to improve the estranged relationship with Iran, the Syrian government's only regional ally. Most of Mr. Moallem's speech amounted to a point-by-point rejection of the West's version of the conflict in Syria, which began as a peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011 and has morphed into a sectarian civil war that has left more than 100,000 people dead and millions displaced, and turned the country into a magnet for Sunni jihadists bent on toppling Mr. Assad's ruling Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. In a reference to a group of Western and Arab countries that support the opposition, Mr. Moallem said, "They are the ones supporting terrorism in my country, in contradiction of all United Nations resolutions and all human and moral values." He said some of these countries did not want to recognize that Al Qaeda and its affiliates are even fighting in Syria. "The scenes of murder, manslaughter and eating human hearts were shown on TV screens, but did not touch blind consciences," he said. In Syria, ladies and gentlemen, there are murderers who dismember human bodies into pieces while still alive and send their limbs to their families, just because those citizens are defending a unified and secular Syria. He ridiculed assertions made by the United States and its allies about the existence of a moderate armed opposition in Syria that has repudiated the jihadists and that advocates an inclusive democracy representing all Syrian groups. "The claims about the existence of moderate militants and extremist militants have become a bad joke," he said. Terrorism means only terrorism. It cannot be classified as moderate terrorism and extremist terrorism. Mr. Moallem appeared to refer only obliquely to the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus that left hundreds of people dead, an event that led to intensive diplomacy by Russia and the United States that averted an American-led missile strike on Syrian government targets. As a result, Syria, known to harbor one of the world's largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, agreed to join the worldwide treaty banning them. A unanimous Security Council resolution approved Friday is aimed at holding Syria to its pledge, under which the weapons will be sequestered and then destroyed by mid-2014. A United Nations investigation into the Aug. 21 attack did not specify who was responsible but the forensic information it compiled appeared to implicate Syrian government forces. Mr. Assad has repeatedly asserted that insurgents are using chemical arms. Reflecting the government's view, Mr. Moallem said that even with its accession to the treaty banning chemical weapons, "there remains the challenge that is facing all of us: whether those who are supplying terrorists with these types of weapons will abide by their legal commitments, since terrorists, who used poisonous gases in my country, have received chemical agents from regional and Western countries that are well known to all of us."