Monday, 2 January 2017
President Bashar al-Assad gave a statement to the Italian TV-channel “TG5”.
Following is the full context of the statement:
Question 1: President Assad, a few days ago, the Syrian
Army, with the help of the Russian force, took the control of most of
Aleppo. We can say that the war is almost over?
President Assad: No, not yet, you cannot talk about the
war is over until you get rid of the terrorists in Syria, and those
terrorists unfortunately still have formal support from many countries
including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and many Western countries. So,
this hasn’t changed, and this kind of support will make the war drag on.
But the defeat of the terrorists in Aleppo is an important step toward
ending the war. If you don’t have that external support to those
terrorists, it won’t be difficult at all to get rid from the terrorists
everywhere in Syria, and at that time we can talk about the end of war.
Question 2: But what can you say on the huge number of victims among the civilians, and this is a big problem.
President Assad: In Syria in general?
Journalist: Yeah, yeah.
President Assad: Of course, it is a big problem; the
most important thing than the infrastructure and the buildings are the
people who’s been killed, the families that lost their dear ones,
children, their sons, brothers, sisters, mothers, and so on. This is the
suffering, they’re going to live with this pain forever. But at the
end, the only way to solve the problem in Syria is for everyone to
forgive every other one. So, I think we have this feeling, that this is
the main orientation, on the public level.
Question 3: And the role of Daesh here in Syria…. You
defeat Daesh, because we have problem in Europe too with Daesh, you
know, the Berlin attack. What can we do with Daesh?
President Assad: As Europeans?
Journalists: As Europeans and…
President Assad: Yeah. The problem is not only ISIS.
ISIS is the product, one of the products of extremism. When you talk
about Daesh, you can talk about al-Nusra, you can talk about many other
different organizations, they have the same mentality and the same dark
ideology. The core problem of those organizations, first of all, is the
ideology, the Wahabi ideology.. If you don’t deal with it in Europe and
in our region and in the world in general, we cannot deal with the
extremism and its product, the terrorism, anywhere in the world. I mean,
in that regard; if you don’t deal with the ideology, you are dealing
only temporarily with the problem. If you want to deal with the issue of
terrorism permanently, you have to deal with the pillar of that
terrorism, which is the Wahabi ideology.
This is first. But currently you have another pillar of the problem;
it’s the Western support of those terrorists, maybe not ISIS in general,
but they give different labels: “moderates, white helmets,” they give
all these humanitarian – sometimes – and moderate labels just to give
them the cover in order to achieve their political goals. So, their
priority in Europe – I’m talking about the European governments – their
priority is not fighting terrorism; their priority is using those cards
in order to change governments, and to get rid of presidents, and so on.
So, with this policy, you cannot defeat terrorism in around the world,
and that’s why, as you see, during the last few years, there’s nothing
happening regarding terrorism in Europe; the terrorists are still
attacking freely, with no change in the situation, because the Western
officials are not serious in dealing with this problem.
Question 4: And the last question: so, do you think
that the election of Donald Trump could change something here in the
role of the United States in this area?
President Assad: Let’s say we are more optimistic with
caution, because we don’t know what is the policy that he’s going to
adopt regarding our region in general, how can he deal with the
different lobbies in the United States that oppose any solution in Syria
and any good relations with Russia. But we can say part of the optimism
could be related to better relation between the United States and
Russia, not the West and Russia; because Europe doesn’t exist on the
political map. I’m talking about only the United States. If there’s good
relation between these two great powers, most of the world, including
small countries like Syria, will be the beneficiary of this relation. In
that regard, we can say there will be a solution in Syria. At the same
time, he said – Mr. Trump, during his campaign – that his priority is
fighting terrorism, and we believe that this is the beginning of the
solution, if he can implement what he announced.
Journalist: Okay, thank you.
President Assad: Thank you.
President Bashar al-Assad gave a statement to the Italian newspaper “Il Giornale”.
Following is the full text of the statement:
Question 1: Many Syrian people have come in Europe
because of war. After the liberation of Aleppo, it seems the war is
going to finish. What would you like to say to people who have run away
from their home?
President Assad: If you ask me what do they want, I
would tell you as a Syrian, and they are my fellow citizens, that they
want to go back to their country, because everyone wants to go back to
his country, but they need two things: they need stability, security,
and at the same time they need the basic needs of their livelihood that
many of them lost because of the war. So, in that case, I cannot say
that I’m going to invite them to go back to Syria, because this is their
country, they don’t need invitation to go back, but what I would like
to say in that case is to the European officials who created this
problem by supporting the terrorism directly or indirectly in our
country, and they created this flood of Syrians going to Europe, at the
same time they say “we are supporting them from a humanitarian point of
view.” They don’t need your support in your country; they need your
support in our country. They need to stop supporting terrorists, they
need to lift the embargo that pushed many Syrians to go to Europe
because of the embargo, not only because of the terrorism. Because of
the embargo, they cannot live anymore in their country.
Question 2: Many political analysts think the Syrian
“no” to the pipeline routes proposed by Qatar may be one of the reason
why the war began in 2011. How important has been your “no” to Qatar in
the beginning of the war?
President Assad: It is one of the important factors,
but it wasn’t offered to us publicly, but I think it was planned; there
was two routes crossing Syria: one of them is north-south, which is
related to Qatar as you just mentioned, and the other one was east-west
to the Mediterranean that crossed Iraq from Iran, and at that time, we
were embarked in building that one that’s going east-west, and I think
many countries who opposed the policy of Syria didn’t want Syria to be a
hub of energy, whether electricity or oil, or even crossroads of
railways, and so on. So, this is one of the factors. But the one related
to the north-south and Qatar, it wasn’t proposed to us directly.
Question 3: Terrorism is a global threat. Last week,
Germany has been attacked by Daesh. Is the Syrian government helping
Europe to fight against terrorism? If it is, how are you doing it?
President Assad: This is simple evident to say, I can
help you if you want to help yourself, but if you don’t want to help
yourself, how can I help you? The problem with Europe is that they don’t
want to help themselves. They are working – I mean the officials and
the governments – working against their interest. They are working
against the interest of their own people. They are supporting the
terrorists. How can I help them if they are supporting the terrorists in
our region, in order to halt terrorism attack in Europe? I cannot. If
you don’t have good policy before intelligence, you cannot achieve any
result, whether through the intelligence or militarily or any other way.
Politics is the umbrella. So, the politics in Europe are in support of
those terrorists. When they change their politics, we’re going to be
ready to help them.
Question 4: The last question, Mr. Assad. Christians
have suffered a lot because of the war. What kind of role may they have
in helping Syria today?
President Assad: If you look at Syria, not today, not
during the last few years; during the last centuries, it’s always
diverse, it’s a melting pot of different religions, sects, and
ethnicities. We have a wide spectrum of diversity. Without this wide
spectrum of diversity, you won’t have Syria, regardless of the name,
regardless of the political border; I’m talking about Syria as society,
as it was before the war. Because of this war, you have many demographic
changes, whether because of the displacement of the people internally
or externally. My impression, and I’m confident about that, after the
war the majority of the Syrians will go back to Syria. So, Syria is
going to, let’s say, if you want to use the word, be reborn naturally,
because it hasn’t vanished yet, this is first. Second, this war has
brought many Syrians together. They learned the lessons – so many
lessons – that if we don’t accept each other, if we don’t respect each
other on every level of this word, you cannot have unified society.
Without this unified society, Syria cannot be reborn. So, I think, not
only to talk about the rebirth of Syria, I can feel today that if you
don’t have terrorism, the social society is going to be much stronger
than the society that you knew before the war, because of the lesson
that we’ve learned.
Journalist: Thank you, Mr. Assad.
President Assad: Thank you.
SOURCES:
Syrian Arab News Agency, 29/12/2016, 30/12/2016 Submitted by SyrianPatriot War Press Info Network at : https://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/al-assad-giornale-tg5/ ~ Related Articles
No comments:
Post a Comment