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Sunday 19 May 2013

Assad: I’ll run for a third term in 2014


Assad was interviewed at his palace library room
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has poured cold water on prospects of an international conference for peace in Syria proposed earlier this month by the United States and Russia.
He also told Argentina’s Clarín newspaper in an exclusive interview he would run for a third seven-year term in the June 2014 presidential election.
I excerpted the salient remarks made by Assad from the library of his palace in Damascus to Clarín's reporter Marcelo Cantelmi. Here goes:
ASSAD SPEAKING:
Multiple factors make the Syria crisis intricate and long-drawn-out. The foremost cause is foreign meddling, which we are resisting so as to protect Syria.
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The death of any Syrian is a tragic loss but the death toll figures being spread around are inflated. There is no precise death toll figure to quote, but many of those killed were foreigners who came to Syria to kill Syrians.
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Without defining the term “excessive force,” you can’t determine whether government forces used it. Generally, the state’s response has been commensurate with the level of terrorism used against it. The more sophisticated the terrorists get, the more intense the response of our military and security forces.
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Our political reform measures -- including the endorsement of a new constitution, the lifting of the state of emergency and the initiation of a national dialogue with opposition political parties -- were met by amplification of the terror.
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Terrorism can never be an implement for reforms. What interest does a wanted terrorist from Chechnya or Afghanistan have with the internal political reform process in Syria? There are foreign fighters from different 29 nationalities now engaged in terrorist activities in Syria.
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Have the United States or European countries ever negotiated with terrorists? Dialogue is with legitimate political entities and a conventional opposition, not with terrorist groups.
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We support every effort to stop the violence in Syria and every endeavor that would lead to a political solution. We welcome the Russian-American understanding and look forward to an international parley to help Syrians overcome the crisis. But I don’t think many Western nations genuinely want a Syria solution. Powers backing the terrorists don’t want a solution either – they’ve already shot down the Russian-American agreement by rejecting dialogue with the Syrian state. While we support and welcome the Russian-American initiative, we have to be realistic. After all, it takes two to tango.
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The offshore opposition you mention is not independent. It is funded by foreign countries and lives under the shadow of their respective intelligence agencies. If the offshore opposition groups had a popular homegrown following they would be sitting in Syria. Still, they have officially come out against dialogue. Only last week, they said clearly they don’t want to negotiate with the Syrian state.
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We’re open to dialogue with everyone, except terrorists. There is a universal mix-up between terrorism and a political solution. They think a political conference would lead to a cessation of violence, which is wide of the mark. So long as countries like Qatar, Turkey and others have no interest in stopping violence and in a political solution in Syria, terrorism will continue. What an international conference can do is to stop the inflow of terrorists from Turkey and cash from Qatar and other Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia.
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Israel backs these terrorist gangs in two ways (1) logistical help, such as tending to the wounded terrorists on the Syrian side of the Golan front, and (2) directives on how to mount their attacks and what sites to target. For instance, it directed them to target a radar site belonging to an air defense system against incoming warplanes in case of a Syria-Israel war.
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The West brings up the subject of combatants from Iran and Hezbollah in Syria whenever we broach the subject of foreign fighters. Syria has a population of 23 million and does not need manpower help from any other country. We don’t need anyone from Iran or Hezbollah to help us. Our relations with them are manifest and decades old.
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Whether I remain in office or leave depends on the Syrian people. As a president, it is not my personal decision to stay or leave. You can’t rule without the people’s support. The decision belongs to the ballot box. People will decide on this in the 2014 presidential elections. But for America or the terrorists or some other nations to order the Syrian president to go is unacceptable.
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I don’t know if (U.S. Secretary of State) John Kerry or anyone else received a mandate from the Syrian people to speak on their behalf as to whether someone should stay or go. Syria is an independent state. Any decision about reforms in Syria will come from Syria and neither the U.S. nor any other state can decide what we do. Besides, the country is in crisis and a captain does not abandon a ship facing a storm at sea. In any case, to resign would be to flee and I am not the kind of person to shun responsibility.
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International monitoring of the 2014 presidential elections is not a decision I can make alone. It’s a national decision.  Some people believe it would violate Syria’s national sovereignty. Others simply do not trust the West for this task. And others would want observers from friendly countries, such as Russia or China.
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The West’s statements on the use of chemical weapons change every day – there is proof, there is some proof, there is no proof etc… Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction. The West claims we used them in populated centers. When you hear of a nuclear bomb killing 10 or 20 people, can you believe that? Using chemical weapons in urban areas would mean killing thousands or tens of thousands of people in a matter of minutes. Who could hide something like that? Why did the West shrug off Carla del Ponte’s statement saying terrorists used chemicals?
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Any war on Syria won’t be easy. They know this. They know it won’t be a picnic.
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Intervention is a clear probability, especially after we managed to beat back the armed groups in many areas of Syria. Israeli airstrikes were used, for example, to raise the terrorist groups’ morale. We expect an intervention at some point, albeit limited in nature.