The United Arab Emirates has said it’s prepared to send ground troops to Syria as part of the global coalition fighting “Islamic State”.
Advertisement
The United States welcomes a Saudi offer to deploy special forces to support a coalition ground operation against the Islamic State group inside Syria, the kingdom’s foreign minister said Monday.
Asiri said in a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat that Saudi Arabia only announced its willingness to participate in any ground operations against ISIS that the worldwide coalition may agree to carry out in Syria because it has a serious desire to defeat the terrorist organisation.
“So it’s our hope that because we both believe in diplomacy that over the course of these next days some progress can be made with respect to Syria and we can lay the groundwork for even more efforts ahead”.
Four months of Russian air strikes have tipped momentum toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the nearly-five year Syrian civil war in which at least 250,000 people have died and more than 10 million have fled their homes.
When asked about the possibility of Saudi ground troops entering Syria, he said although it was unlikely, “with the insane Saudi leadership nothing is far-fetched”. That coalition supports the government there in its fight against Houthi rebels who seized much of the country and are backed by the kingdom’s regional rival Iran. Moreover, Riyadh has largely focused its efforts on its military intervention into Yemen and has not done much to defeat the brutal Sunni group in Iraq and Syria.
“Any ground intervention on Syrian land without the agreement of the Syrian government is an act of aggression … we regret that those (who invade) will return to their countries in coffins”, al-Moualem told journalists. “I look forward to discussing that with the Saudi defense minister next week – that and other kinds of contributions that Saudi Arabia can make”.
Advertisement
“They claim they will send troops but I don’t think they will dare do so”, Jafari said, according to the International Business Times.
