Al-Assad: Syrian Issue not an US Business, Crisis to be Resolved in Less than a Year
Local Editor
After more than four years of the war in and on Syria, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stressed that what is left of Syria now is its people. “I think the majority of the people now support their government, regardless of their political spectrum, and they still support the unity of Syria and the integration of the society as one society with multi-color aspects,” al- Assad explained.
In an interview with DUTCH NPO2 TV, Assad stressed that he is more confident than before about unity in his country. However, he didn’t deny the mistakes committed by some people, especially in times of war. He further added that chaos sometimes would happen, yet there is a difference between such mistakes and the policy of torturing people and losing their support.
On the level of remaining president of the country, hestressed that this is a Syrian issue and that only the Syrian people would say who’s going to stay or not: “If the Syrian people doesn’t want me to stay, I have to leave right away, today.” He further added that whether he’s leaving now or leaving in six months or six years, it’s not the business of the Americans.
Separately, when asked about foreign airstrikes against terrorist groups namely “ISIS”, al-Assad considered the action doesn’t work because “you cannot fight terrorism without troops on the ground, and without a real social incubator that supports you in your war against those terrorists.” Additionally, he considered the decision by some countries to start bombing the group’s targets from Syrian airspace without Syrian permission as illegal: “This is against the international law. We are a sovereign country.”
Wondering why terrorists flow from Europe, the head of the Syrian state explained that Syria turned into a hotbed for terrorism because Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and those countries supported terrorists in different ways. “When chaos dominates the country, there becomes a fertile soil to attract terrorists from the rest of the world.”
Moreover, the Syrian president considered Turkey a logistical key in the issue of the flow of terrorists into Syria, stressing that Saudi Arabia is another key, with its money and ideology.
Referring to the parties that the government would negotiate with, al-Assad noted that: “Any person who holds armaments and kills people and destroys public and private properties and so on, is a terrorist, so we don’t, as a government, we don’t make negotiations with the terrorists.”
However, he stressed readiness to negotiate with parties that aim at removing him from power: “They can convince the Syrian people that there’s a better alternative. We don’t have a problem.”
Concluding, the Syrian president was optimistic enough to remark that the crisis would be resolved in less than one year: “If the responsible countries take actions against the flood and the flowing of terrorists and the logistic support, I can guarantee that it will take less than one year. But the problem is that they are still supporting them on daily basis more and more in order to make it more messy, and to put obstacles in front of any solution, because they want the solution, what they called a political solution, to end with the changing of this state, getting rid of this president or depose him, and so on.”
Source: Al-Ahed news
