Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Saturday he would press on with the brutal crackdown against anti-government unrest in his country, despite increased pressure from the Arab League to end it.

Speaking to Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper, Assad said, “The conflict will continue and the pressure to subjugate Syria will continue. However, I assure you that Syria will not bow down and that it will continue to resist the pressure being imposed on it.”

Assad was quoted as having told the newspaper there would be elections in February or March, when Syrians would vote for a parliament to create a new constitution and that would include provision for a presidential ballot.

“That constitution will set the basis of how to elect a president, if they need a president or don’t need him,” he said. “They have the elections, they can participate in it. The ballot boxes will decide who should be president.”

Last week, the Arab League voted to suspend Syria from the 22-member organization and then gave Damascus three days to accept an observer mission or face economic sanctions.

A senior Syrian official said Friday that the government had agreed to the observer mission in principle but was “still studying the details.”

The United Nations says 3,500 people have been killed during the crackdown on the protests which began in March, but Assad disputed this and put the number killed at 619. He told the paper that 800 government forces had been killed.

“My role as president -- this is my daily obsession now -- is to know how to stop this bloodshed caused by armed terrorist acts that are hitting some areas,” he said.

He added that the Arab League's intervention could provide a pretext for Western military action and repeated a past warning that such a move against Syria would create an “earthquake” across the Middle East.

“If they are logical, rational and realistic, they shouldn’t do it because the repercussions are very dire,” Assad was quoted as saying. “Military intervention will destabilize the region as a whole, and all countries will be affected.”

Assad also promised The Sunday Times that he would personally fight and die to resist foreign forces.