Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has ruled out collaborating with France and said his country is ready to share intelligence with it only if Paris changed its policy toward Syria.
Advertisement
“The timetable, if you want to talk about schedule, this timetable starts after starting defeating terrorism”.
The president reiterated that his country is not a breeding ground for Islamic State militants.
He said first the decision on a government of national accord should be made, and then the Syrian people should be given a possibility to decide themselves on who they wanted to see as their leader.
“There will be no point in deciding any timetable, because you can not achieve anything while you have the terrorists in Syria”, he said.
“What France suffered from savage terror is what the Syrian people have been enduring for five years”, Assad said during his meeting with a visiting delegation of French lawmakers. “If we talk after that, one year and a half to two years is enough for any transition”, Assad said in an interview with the Italian RAI UNO television on Wednesday evening.
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with Takfiri terrorists from various groups, including the ISIL, now controlling parts of it.
“It is not going to be sufficient for us to have formal political processes that lead to Assad still being in power”, he told reporters at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit in Manila.
But he called Russian Federation a constructive partner in the UN-backed efforts to end the Syrian conflict, despite its opposing views on the fate of Mr Assad.
Advertisement
He also went on to say that the Paris attacks were a disgusting crime.
