“I can tell you Daesh doesn’t have the natural incubator, social incubator, within Syria”, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview.
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However, President Obama reiterated the USA stand on Thursday, saying that Assad must go.
They produced a two-year timetable: a transitional government would be formed and a new constitution written within six months, to be followed by internationally monitored elections within 18 months after that.
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with Takfiri terrorists from various groups, including the ISIL, now controlling parts of it.
He said that political process in Syria “will get nowhere” if there is no “serious and effective” fight against terrorism.
But Russia is an ally of Assad, and o n Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would not accept calls for Assad’s removal. Of course many other officials say the same in the United States.
While formally neutral on the four-year-old insurgency in the next-door Arab state, Israel has sought to raise alarm overseas about support given to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by Israel’s arch-foe Iran and Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon. The remarks by world leaders have rolled back hopes that a political solution was on the horizon.
Once the opposition finalizes its negotiators, the United Nations will convene the parties who participated in 2013 Geneva talks to begin the process of creating a transition for Syria, according to Kerry.
A senior IDF officer told Reuters that Israeli intelligence findings indicated “55-plus” Iranians had been killed in clashes with Syrian opposition rebels in recent weeks.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said those killed were oil smugglers and their families, not IS fighters.
Meanwhile, Syria’s army and rebels struggled to pursue talks to reach a 15-day ceasefire in the Eastern Ghouta rebel stronghold east of Damascus. The two sides had been locked in talks overnight in the hopes of reaching a deal by 6am (noon Singapore time), in what would be the first temporary truce in Eastern Ghouta.
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The Meir Amit center said the high casualty rate indicated the Iranian soldiers were fighting the ground offensive on the front lines. They support them with human resources. Another eight people were killed and 20 wounded in government shelling of an olive press in Sheikh Maskin, in the southern province of Daraa, it said.
