AMMAN, Jordan (MCT) — A defiant Syrian President Bashar Assad offered no new initiatives Sunday to revive a faltering United Nations peace plan but instead assailed a “foreign conspiracy” stoking violence and denied his government had a role in “monstrous massacres” across the nation.

“The truth is that even monsters do not do what we saw, especially in the Houla massacre,” Assad said, referring to the house-to-house executions last month of scores of civilians, mostly women and children, in the town of Houla.