WASHINGTON/BEIRUT: Syrian President Bashar Assad denied ordering the killing of thousands of protesters and said “only a crazy person” would target his own people, as global pressure mounted Wednesday on his regime.

In a rare interview, Assad said that he was not responsible for the nine months of bloodshed and drew a distinction between himself and the military – an assertion that the United States called “ludicrous.”

“We don’t kill our people,” Assad told U.S. network ABC. “No government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person.

“There was no command to kill or be brutal,” Assad told veteran ABC News interviewer Barbara Walters.

Assad said that security forces belonged to “the government” and not him personally.

“I don’t own them. I’m president. I don’t own the country. So they are not my forces,” Assad said.

Assad’s family has ruled Syria with an iron fist for four decades. Assad’s brother, Lieutenant Colonel Maher Assad, heads the army’s Fourth Division, which oversees the capital as well as the elite Republican Guard.

The United Nations estimates that more than 4,000 people have died as Syria cracks down on protesters, who have emerged as the greatest challenge yet to Assad amid a wave of uprisings in the Arab world that have toppled authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

Assad dismissed the death toll, saying: “Who said that the United Nations is a credible institution?”

“Most of the people that have been killed are supporters of the government, not the vice versa,” Assad said in English, giving a figure of 1,100 dead soldiers and police.

Walters pressed Assad on the case of Hamza al-Khatib, a 13-year-old boy who rights group say was killed in April after being shot, burned and castrated.

“To be frank with you, Barbara, you don’t live here,” Assad said of alleged abuse of children.

“Every ‘brute reaction’ was by an individual, not by an institution – that’s what you have to know,” Assad said. “There is a difference between having a policy to crack down and between having some mistakes committed by some officials. There is a big difference.”

Assad, a 46-year-old former ophthamologist, repeated statements made when he succeeded his late father Hafez Assad more than a decade ago that he does not want to lead Syria for life, indicating he would step down if he did not enjoy popular support.

“When I feel that the public support declined, I won’t be here. Even if they say – if they ask. I shouldn’t be here if there’s no public support,” Assad said, indicating that he still enjoys popular support. He insisted that his government was moving ahead with reforms but stated flatly: “We never said we are democratic country.

“It takes a long time,” Assad said. “It takes a lot of maturity to be full-fledged democracy.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner dared Assad to back up his assertions by letting in international observers and media, saying that there was a “clear campaign against peaceful protesters.”

“It either says that he’s completely lost any power that he had within Syria, that he’s simply a tool or that he’s completely disconnected with reality,” Toner told reporters Wednesday.

“It’s either disconnection, disregard or, as he said, crazy. I don’t know,” Toner said,” triggering a rebuke from Syria’s Foreign Ministry which accused him of distorting the remarks.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi said: “We regret and express our astonishment at the remarks by U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner, who mocked the comments made by President Assad by distorting them.”

He told a news conference that Assad had not been seeking to shirk his responsibilities as head of state by telling Walters that Syrian security forces did not belong to him personally.

Meanwhile former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri responded to the interview via Twitter, accusing Assad of “lies.”

“Its a big lie everything he said about #Syria was a lie, He is the main killer in all of this,” he tweeted. Syria has come under growing international pressure, with Arab nations and Turkey joining Western powers in pursuing sanctions against Assad.

Turkey, which had close economic ties with Syria, Wednesday announced a 30-percent tax on goods from the neighboring country. Turkey has already banned transactions with Syria’s government and central bank.

The Arab League has suspended Syria and has threatened new sanctions if Assad does not allow in observers. Syria initially refused but at the last minute offered to let in monitors in return for an end to sanctions.

Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby is due in Baghdad Thursday to discuss the regional bloc’s sanctions against Syria, which Iraq refuses to enforce, a Foreign Ministry official told AFP. “He will hold talks with [Foreign Minister] Hoshyar Zebari, particularly on Syria,” the official said.

Iraq’s close trade ties with Syria, from which it imports significant amounts of foodstuffs, pushed the Iraqi government to abstain from the Arab League vote on sanctions.

In the ABC News interview, Assad brushed aside the international pressure, saying: “We’ve been under sanctions for the last 30, 35 years. It’s not something new.”

The United States and France Tuesday sent their ambassadors back to Syria in hopes that they can shine light on the violence and show solidarity with protesters, weeks after the envoys were pulled out due to safety concerns.

Looking to the post-Assad future, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Tuesday in Geneva with the dissident Syrian National Council and urged the protection of women and minorities, as details of escalating sectarian conflict emerged from the central city of Homs.

Dozens of bodies were reportedly dumped in the streets of Homs Monday and up to 50 people killed, but details about what happened in Syria’s third largest city only came to light Tuesday with reports of retaliatory attacks pitting members of the Alawite sect against Sunnis.

Opposition figures have accused Assad’s minority Alawite regime of trying to stir up trouble with the Sunni majority to blunt enthusiasm for the uprising.

“It was an insane escalation,” activist Mohammad Saleh told the Associated Press by telephone from Homs. “There were kidnappings and killings in a mad way. People are afraid to go out of their homes.”

Thirty-four of the dead were shot execution-style, their bodies dumped in a public square, according to Saleh and others who monitor the violence, including the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Saleh said all were from the predominantly Sunni district of Jabb al-Jandali. He said that Alawite gunmen had raided the district after an Alawite was found dead earlier.

A Homs government official confirmed only that 43 bodies were found Monday in Homs. He asked that his name not be published because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The reports could not be independently confirmed. Syria has banned most foreign journalists and prevents the work of independent media.

“It’s complete chaos, each side blames the other, and we don’t know who is responsible,” Saleh said. “In some districts, it’s like civil war.”

For many Syrians, the uncertainty over the future is cause for alarm in a country with a fragile jigsaw puzzle of Middle Eastern backgrounds including Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druze, Circassians, Armenians and more.

“Obviously, a democratic transition is more than removing the Assad regime. It means setting Syria on the path of the rule of law,” Clinton told the activists, who are all exiles in Europe and belong to the Syrian National Council, one of several umbrella groups for Assad foes.