Assad: Terror Experienced by Parisians #Paris Has Gone on in Syria for Five Years

November 14, 2015 By administrator

Condemning Friday’s Paris terror attacks and sending his condolences to the French people, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad noted that the attacks were reminiscent of the daily terror and turmoil faced by the Syrian people over the past five years through the country’s violent civil conflict.

“The savage terror France suffered from yesterday is what the Syrian people have been enduring for over five years,” Assad said, cited by French radio station Europe1.

On Saturday, the Syrian president received a delegation of French parliamentarians, intellectuals, and media figures, headed by Les Republicans National Assembly MP Thierry Mariani, SANA reported.

Speaking with his guests, Assad noted that “terrorism is one field in the world and terrorist organizations do not recognize borders.” As a result, “the terrorist attacks which France was subjected to on Friday cannot be separated from the attacks which took place in Beirut [on Thursday] and from those which Syria has faced over the past five years.”

Conveying his condolences to President Francois Hollande and the French people, the Syrian president emphasized that the fight against terrorism will be long and difficult, and that the international community must offer a united and strong response to the threat.

The president noted that unfortunately, “wrong policies adopted by Western states, particularly France, toward events in the region,” including Paris’s “ignorance of the support of a number of its allies to terrorists, are reasons behind the expansion of terrorism.” According to Assad, France and other Western nations must now work to “fix this mistake, and to take effective measures to stop logistical support for the terrorists, through to their utter destruction.”

For their part, the French delegation voiced their sympathy for the suffering of the Syrian people, affirming that they would pass on what they had seen during their visit to the French public, in the aim of creating a more realistic picture of what’s going on in Syria. Ahead of their meeting with the president, the delegation toured a hospital in Damascus, speaking to injured servicemen.

Commenting on the trip, MP Nicolas Dhuicq told Sputnik that Assad had told the delegation that “we all need to be strong and to act together in the fight against terrorist groups,” given that “this tragedy has affected everyone –that everyone can become the target of the terrorists.”

Near-simultaneous gun and bomb attacks struck seven venues in Paris on Friday, killing over 120 people and wounding scores of others. The attacks prompted condemnations from across the globe, including Russia and Syria.

The massacre overshadowed talks on Syrian reconciliation in Vienna. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry issued a joint press statement, Kerry noting that what the world is “witnessing the kind of medieval and modern fascism…which has no regard for life, that seeks to destroy, create chaos, disorder and fear.”

The Syrian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attacks, noting that “Syrians grieve and sympathize with the French people and the victims’ families, and wish a speedy recovery to the injured. The Syrian people, having themselves suffered for five years from the crimes of terrorists and religious fanatics, understand more than anyone the tragedy which took place in Paris.”

Armenia: Syria talks should not focus on ousting Assad: Russian FM

November 9, 2015 By administrator

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (L) speaks during a joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian following their meeting in Yerevan on November 9, 2015. (AFP)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that the upcoming Syria talks should not be based on demands for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

Speaking at a press conference in the Armenian capital Yerevan on Monday, Lavrov said that such an approach was “simplistic” and that the summit should be instead focused on agreeing delegates for the Syrian opposition and which groups should be considered as extremists.

He noted that Russia had already shared its “list of terrorist organizations” with its partners on Syria, and that during the upcoming rounds of talks, scheduled for the weekend, Moscow expects the drawing up of a “unified list, so that there are no issues about who is striking whom and who is supporting whom.”

The previous negotiations about the Syrian crisis were held in the Austrian capital Vienna on October 30, bringing together top diplomats from 17 countries, including Iran, as well as envoys from the United Nations and the European Union.

Lavrov also called for wider participation in the talks, saying that following this weekend’s summit, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League should be included.

“There will be another meeting in the nearest future in an enlarged format… that is about 20 countries and organizations,” he said.

The foreign-backed militancy in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has so far claimed the lives of over 250,000 people and displaced millions of others.

Syria’s President Assad ready for early elections – Russian delegation to Damascus

October 25, 2015 By administrator

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad

The Syrian President Bashar Assad has agreed to hold preliminary elections in the country, on the condition the move has the backing of the population, a member of Moscow’s Parliamentary delegation has told the TASS news agency.

Russian Communist party MP Aleksandr Yushenko mentioned from Syria that the president “is ready to discuss amendments to the constitution, hold parliamentary elections and, if the people of Syria deem necessary, expressed a readiness to hold presidential elections.”

According to Yushenko, who met the Syrian president in Damascus, Assad “is absolutely confident of his chances [of victory],” should the elections take place.

During the meeting, the Syrian leader stressed that “the fight against terrorism will become the foundation for a new and just world based on sovereignty and cooperation.” The president also told Syrian media that “eliminating terrorist groups will lead to the political solution we aim for in Syria and Russia.”

The Syrian president also said he is expecting a visit from Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin and chair Valentina Matvienko.

The news comes after last Saturday’s message to the Syrian leadership from the Russian members of parliament.

Putin: Syria has achieved positive results in fight against IS

October 21, 2015 By administrator

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said during a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, which took place in Moscow on Tuesday, that Damascus achieved positive results in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group [banned in Russia].
Assad arrived in Moscow on the first trip abroad since the civil war began in Syria in 2011.
“The Syrian people have been resisting practically single-handedly, fighting with international terrorism for several years now. They are sustaining heavy losses, but recently they have achieved significant positive results in this struggle,” the Kremlin’s website quotes Putin as saying.
During the meeting, the Russian leader cordially welcomed Assad, noting that, in spite of the dramatic situation in Syria, he responded to Moscow’s request and came to Russia. “We made a decision in accordance with your request and are providing effective assistance to the Syrian people in the fight against international terrorism, which has unleashed a real war against Syria,” Putin said.
The Russian president also said Moscow is concerned about the participation of nationals coming from the former Soviet states in the fighting against Syria’s government forces.
“This concerns us, I mean Russia, as unfortunately on the Syrian territory there are descendants of the former Soviet republics with arms in hands against the government forces, there are around 4,000 of them, at least,” the Russian leader said.
Putin noted that “the attempts of the international terrorism to put under control significant territories in the Middle East and to destabilize the situation in the region arouse legal concerns in many countries of the world.”
The Russian leader stressed that Russia’s authorities cannot allow that these people return to the country after receiving combat experience and ideological training
Russia is ready to make its contribution not only to the fight against terror in Syria, but also in the political settlement in contact with other powers and with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups, Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with Bashar Assad.
“With regard to the settlement in Syria, we proceed from the assumption that based on the positive dynamics in the combat operations, the long-term settlement can be finally achieved through a political process with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups,” the Russian leader said as quoted on the Kremlin website. Putin also said that ultimately, “the Syrian people certainly must have the final say.”
The Russian president said that Syria is a friendly country to Russia. “We are ready to make a fair share of contribution not only in the fight against terrorism, but also in the political process — of course, in close contact with the other world powers and with the countries of the region that are interested in the conflict’s peaceful settlement,” Putin said.

Syrian Kurdish leader says collapse of Assad regime ‘disaster for everyone’

September 28, 2015 By administrator

Salih Muslim, co-president of the Democratic Union Party PYD. Photo: AFP

Patrick Cockburn | The Independent

QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan,— The overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad by Isis and rebel groups that are affiliated to al-Qaeda would be a calamity for the world, says the Syrian Kurdish leader Saleh Muslim.

In an interview with The Independent he warned that “if the regime collapses because of the salafis [fundamentalist Islamic militants] it would be a disaster for everyone.”

Mr Muslim said he was fully in favour of Mr Assad and his government being replaced by a more acceptable alternative. But he is concerned that Isis and other extreme Islamist groups are now close to Damascus on several sides, saying that “this is dangerous”. During a recent Isis offensive in the north eastern city of Hasaka, the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia and the Syrian Army both came under attack from Isis, but Mr Muslim denied that there was any collaboration between the two.

The Syrian Kurds, previously marginalised and discriminated against by the Damascus government, have become crucial players in the country’s civil war over the last year. In January, they defeated Isis at Kobani with the aid of US airstrikes after a four-and-a-half month siege and their forces are still advancing. While Mr Muslim said that he wants an end to rule by Mr Assad, he makes clear that he considers Isis to be the main enemy.

“Our main goal is the defeat of Daesh [Isis],” he said. “We would not feel safe in our home so long as there is one Daesh [Isis] left alive.” The threat did not come from them alone, he said, but also from al-Qaeda clones such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. “They all have the same mentality.”

Mr Muslim is the president of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) that rules Rojava, as Kurds call the three Kurdish enclaves just south of the Turkish border. A stocky and affable man, aged 64, he apologised before the interview in the city of Ramalan for his broken English – though it turned out to be fluent, something explained by a year spent in Britain learning English and 12 years as an oil industry engineer in Saudi Arabia, where the working language was also English.

He says he is still surprised by the speed with which the Syrian Kurds have emerged from obscurity, since the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Kurdish enclaves in 2012, to become a major force in Syria. The highly-disciplined and committed YPG fighters have won victories over Isis this year at Kobani, Tal Abyad and Hasaka, at the same time that Isis was inflicting defeats on both the Iraqi and Syrian armies.

Mr Muslim and other PYD leaders now face an important decision about the future advance of YPG forces. Having retaken Kobani and 380 villages nearby, they are currently dug in on the east bank of the Euphrates River, close to Isis’s last remaining border crossing to Turkey at Jarabulus and to a larger, strategically important, area north of Aleppo. Turkey is wary of the YPG and is eager to create a so-called “safe zone” which would be held by Syrian opposition groups under its influence – ostensibly to keep Isis from its borders but thus also preventing Kurdish forces from advancing westwards.

Mr Muslim says the present situation cannot continue in this area because Kurdish civilians there are being attacked by Isis. Only the previous day, he said, 300 Kurds had been forced out of their homes in the Isis-held town of Manbij, where Kurds make up 30 per cent of the population, and seven people had been killed. Another 150 Kurdish villages are under threat.

Mr Muslim stressed the YPG was acting to defend not only Kurds, but all Syrians under attack by Isis. He said that if people living in the zone west of the Euphrates and north of Aleppo were “to ask the YPG for help” they would most likely get it. In addition, the Kurds want to open a road to a third Kurdish enclave at Afrin, which is isolated and under threat.

Noting the US wants an Isis-free zone in this area, Mr Muslim said “the perfect way to do this is ground troops and air support”. It is not entirely clear that the US will go along with this and give the YPG the air cover it may need, because it does not want to offend Turkey. However, the Syrian armed opposition is almost wholly dominated by Isis and its al-Qaeda equivalents, so the US does not want to damage the successful collaboration between YPG ground troops and US air power.

How would Turkey respond to a further Kurdish advance? It is already alarmed by the rise of a Kurdish state-let in the form of Rojava on its southern frontier with Syria. It knows that the PYD is essentially the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) against whom it has been fighting a guerrilla war since 1984. Mr Muslim said: “I do not think it is possible that Turkey will invade, but if it does it will be a big problem for Turkey.”

Though the YPG is America’s most effective military ally against Isis in both Iraq and Syria, Washington remains ambivalent about the extent of its co-operation with the Syrian Kurds. Mr Muslim says that “the Americans have not delivered any weapons or ammunition to the YPG”.

They have reassured him their support for the Syrian Kurds will not be weakened by their agreement with Turkey, signed in July, for the US to use Incirlik airbase and for Turkey to join attacks against Isis.

In the event, Turkey launched few air raids against Isis and many hundreds against the PKK in south-east Turkey and northern Iraq. Mr Muslim says that since detachments of the PKK in northern Iraq are fighting Isis, the Turkish actions can only benefit the Islamic militants. He is only partially comforted by American reassurances, saying what worries him is “what has not been revealed” about the US-Turkish deal.

In the course of the interview, Mr Muslim would periodically say that the situation was confusing, but he is adept at seeking to conciliate rival powers. He had just returned from a meeting with President Masoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq and is himself wary of the sudden appearance of a rival Kurdish quasi-state in northern Syria. The KRG has been enforcing an intermittent embargo against Rojava, with some trucks waiting a couple of months on the frontier. Mr Muslim said the border was opening and closing “according to the mood” of KRG authorities.

He is dubious about reports of Russian troops joining the war in Syria. He had been in Moscow last month and had been assured that the Russians “would not do that. [Russian special envoy for Syria Mikhail] Bogdanov said to me that they would not be involved in the fighting.”

Though he is determined to fight Isis until it is defeated, Mr Muslim believes that the Syrian civil war must end in a compromise.

“In the end there should be political solution,” he says. “No side can finish off the other.”

Syria Bashar Assad: Erdogan’s government uses the same tools as Ottomans against Armenians

June 5, 2015 By administrator

The people of Syria and Armenia are faced with the similar challenges and dangers, President of Syria Bashar Assad said during his meeting with the visiting delegation of the Armenian-Syrian Friendship Association in Damascus.

The Ottomans who committed massacres against the Armenian people a hundred years ago are today, represented by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government, using the same tools, mainly terrorism, against the Syrian people, President Assad said.

Head of Armenian delegation Tachat Vardapetyan, for his part, stressed that the Armenian people stand by the side of the people of Syria in the face of the regionally-backed terrorist war waged on them, voicing confidence that Syria will get over this war and rout terrorism and its backers, SANA agency reported.

Talks during the meeting highlighted that further developing the relations between the National Assembly of Armenia and the Syrian People’s Assembly would help in consolidating the relationship between the two countries.

Chairman of the Syrian-Armenian Friendship Association at the People’s Assembly Butrus Marjaneh and Armenia’s Ambassador in Damascus Arshak Poladian attended the meeting.

Armenian FM meets with Syrian president “Today the Arab are experiencing same pain as Armenian did 100 year ago”

May 27, 2015 By administrator

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday received an Armenian delegation headed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbandian, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reports.

During the meeting, the two sides stressed the importance of the deep-rooted historical relations between Syria and Armenia which are based on mutual cultural and civilized heritage, with the two sides asserting the need to enhance these relations continuously to realize the interests of the two countries and the region.
President al-Assad lauded Armenia’s position regarding the crisis in Syria.

President al-Assad noted that the suffering that the Armenian people experienced throughout their history is being experienced today by the Syrian people.

Assad’s warnings start to ring true in Turkey

October 27, 2014 By administrator

By Samia Nakhoul

BEIRUT (Reuters) – When Sunni rebels rose up against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Turkey reclassified its protégé as a pariah, expecting him to lose power within months and join the autocrats of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen on the scrap heap of the “Arab Spring”.

Assad, in contrast, shielded diplomatically by Russia and with military and financial support from Iran and its Shi’ite allies in Lebanon’s Hezbollah, warned that the fires of Syria’s sectarian war would burn its neighbors.

For Turkey, despite the confidence of Tayyip Erdogan, elected this summer to the presidency after 11 years as prime minister and three straight general election victories, Assad’s warning is starting to ring uncomfortably true.

Turkey’s foreign policy is in ruins. Its once shining image as a Muslim democracy and regional power in the NATO alliance and at the doors of the European Union is badly tarnished.

Amid a backlash against political Islam across the region Erdogan is still irritating his Arab neighbors by offering himself as a Sunni Islamist champion.

The world, meanwhile, is transfixed by the desperate siege of Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town just over Turkey’s border, under attack by extremist Sunni fighters of the Islamic State (IS) who are threatening to massacre its defenders.

Erdogan has enraged Turkey’s own Kurdish minority – about a fifth of the population and half of all Kurds across the region – by seeming to prefer that IS jihadis extend their territorial gains in Syria and Iraq rather than that Kurdish insurgents consolidate local power.

The forces holding on in Kobani are part of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), closely allied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a 30-year war against the Turkish state and is now holding peace talks with Ankara.

BIG RISKS

Meanwhile, Turkish tanks stood idly by as the unequal fight raged between the PYD and IS, while Erdogan said both groups were “terrorists” and Kobani would soon fall. It was a public relations disaster.

It drew criticism from NATO allies in the US-led coalition, which has bombed jihadi positions around the town in coordination with the PYD. It also prompted Kurdish riots across south-east Turkey resulting in more than 40 dead.

At the same time, Turkey’s air force bombed PKK positions near the Iraqi border for the first time in two years, calling into question the 2013 ceasefire declared by Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader. PKK commanders warned that if Turkey let Kobani fall, they would go back to war.

Yet now that the United States has dropped arms to Kobani’s defenders, Erdogan has been forced to relent and open a Turkish corridor for Peshmerga fighters from Iraq to reinforce Kobani.

Turkish officials fear this will provoke reprisals in Turkey by IS, activating networks it built during the two years the Erdogan government allowed jihadi volunteers to cross its territory to fight in Syria. Almost anything Turkey does now comes with big risks.

POLARIZED NATION

The polarization within Turkey along sectarian and ethnic lines – which analysts say Erdogan has courted with his stridently Sunni tone as communal conflict between Sunni and Shi’ite rages to Turkey’s south – is easy to detect in the poor and deeply conservative district of Fatih in Istanbul.

“I prefer to have IS than PKK in control of Kobani,” says Sitki, a shopkeeper. “They are Muslims and we are Muslims. (But) we as Muslims should be ruled by the Koran under Sharia law.”

Another local shopkeeper, Nurullah, 35, broadly agreed:

“The only mistake the government has made is to open the door to Kurdish refugees. PYD and PKK are the same, both terrorists. How do (the Americans) have the nerve to ask us to help PYD?”

“Of course Islamic State has sympathizers here because they are wiping out the PKK,” Nurullah continued.

Nearby, a bearded Arabic-speaking man who declined to be named said it made sense that “Turkey as a Sunni nation supports IS over the crusaders”, a hostile reference to the US-led coalition against IS of which Turkey looks an unwilling party.

ZERO NEIGHBORS

The increasingly overt Sunni alignment of Erdogan’s Turkey is, paradoxically, contributing to its isolation, at a time when the United States has won the support of the Sunni Arab powers, led by Saudi Arabia, in the campaign against IS.

Partly, that is because Erdogan and his new prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who as foreign minister was the architect of Turkey’s eastward turn away from the EU, continue to champion the pan-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood, ousted in Egypt last year and banned across the Gulf.

But it is also because of Ankara’s ambivalence towards IS, which some in Turkey’s government saw as a bulwark against its three main regional adversaries: the Assad regime, the Shi’ite-led government in Iraq, and the Kurds.

“Their policy is making Turkey look completely isolated”, says Hugh Pope of the International Crisis Group.

Yet there is a wide consensus that Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried and failed to take a leadership role as the turmoil of the Arab Spring swept across the region and have ended up by infecting Turkey’s secular republic with the sectarianism plaguing the Levant.

“From a zero problems policy (with neighbors) to zero neighbors,” said a headline in the leftist Evrensel newspaper in reference to the AKP policy of entente with neighboring states.

IS FIGHTING TURKEY’S ENEMIES

Behlul Ozkan, a political scientist at Istanbul’s Marmara University, says the Erdogan government has supported Islamist movements in the Middle East to establish a sphere of influence and play a leadership role.

“When the Arab Spring started, Davutoglu saw it as an opportunity for his imperial fantasy of establishing the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) belt from Tunisia to Gaza.

“They are obsessed with destroying the Assad regime. They see IS as an opportunity for Turkey since it is fighting its enemies on three fronts: against Baghdad’s Shi’ite-dominated leadership, against Assad, and the PYD, which is an affiliate of the PKK.”

Soli Ozel, a prominent academic and commentator, said the Erdogan government’s initial expectation was that the Muslim Brotherhood would come to power in Syria.

“Turkish officials believed a year and a half ago they could control the jihadis but they played with fire. This was a policy of sectarianism and they got into something … they couldn’t control, and that is why we are here”.

Other commentators and Turkish officials say Western and Arab powers that called for Assad to be toppled but refused to give mainstream Syrian rebels the weapons to do it are to blame for the rise of Jihadis in the resulting vacuum.

“They (Turkish officials) bet on Assad to fall and when they lost, instead of backing off they are doubling down,” says Hakan Altinay of the Brookings Institution. “They are not the only culprits. The international community is also a culprit in this affair”.

CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO FIRES

But uppermost among Ankara’s fears is the prospect that Syrian Kurds led by the PYD — newly legitimized by their alliance with the United States — will establish a new Kurdish entity on Turkey’s frontiers, which will incite Turkey’s Kurds to seek self government.

“In the realpolitik of all this, IS is fighting all the enemies of Turkey — the Assad regime, Iraqi Shi’ites and the Kurds — but the spillover effect is that it is now paying the price in terms of its vulnerability on the Kurdish question,” says Kadri Gursel, a prominent liberal columnist.

Cengiz Candar, veteran columnist and expert on the Kurdish issue adds: “If Syrian Kurds are successful and establish self-rule they will set a precedent and a model for Turkey’s Kurds, and more than 50 percent of Kurds in the world live here”.

Turkey is thus caught between two fires: the possibility of the PKK-led Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey reviving because of Ankara’s policy towards the Syrian Kurds; and the risk that a more robust policy against IS will provoke reprisal attacks that could be damage its economy and the tourist industry that provides Turkey with around a tenth of its income.

Internationally, one veteran Turkish diplomat fears, IS “is acting as a catalyst legitimizing support for an independent Kurdish state not just in Syria but in Turkey” at a time when leading powers have started to question Turkey’s ideological and security affiliations with the West.

Assad sworn in for 3rd term as Syrian president

July 16, 2014 By administrator

Proclaiming the Syrian people winners in a “dirty war” waged by outsiders, President Bashar Assad was sworn in on Wednesday, marking the start of his third seven-year term in office amid a bloody civil war that has ravaged the Arab country, The Associated Press reported.

Syrian state television broadcast what it said was a live ceremony from the presidential palace in Damascus during which Assad took the oath of office.

The TV showed Assad arriving at the People’s Palace in the Qassioun Mountain, the scenic plateau that overlooks the capital from the north. A band played the Syrian national anthem after which Assad was seen walking a red carpet past an honor guard into a hall packed with members of parliament and Christian and Muslim clergyman.

Wearing a dark blue suit and a blue shirt and tie, Assad placed his hand on Islam’s holy book, the Quran, pledging to honor the country’s constitution.

“I swear by the Almighty God to respect the country’s constitution, laws and its republican system and to look after the interests of the people and their freedoms,” he said.

He then launched into a speech in which he praised the Syrian people for holding the vote and for “defeating the dirty war” launched on the Syrian people.

He won 88.7 percent of the ballots cast in the first multicandidate elections in decades. The voting didn’t take place in opposition-held areas of Syria, effectively excluding millions of people from the vote.