Zee Media Bureau
Damascus: If Syria is to find any successful political solution, then the foreign leaders must stop providing support to the armed opposition, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi who is on Syrian leg of his Middle East tour.
According to Al-Ikhbariya television, Assad was quoted as saying that any solution to Syria conflict must be approved by the people as "Syrian people alone are entitled to draw the future of Syria”, reports said.
Earlier, speaking in the same vein, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem had told Brahimi that all forms of foreign intervention must be stopped as only “Syrian people” had the right to “choose their political future, to choose their leaders”.
The UN envoy is on a Middle East tour with the purpose of drumming up support for the peace talks that are scheduled for Nov 23 in Geneva and he is in Syria with the tough task of convincing the rival parties to join the negotiating table.
While the rebels and the opposition insist that they would not join the “Geneva 2” talks unless Assad’s resignation was on the table, Syrian Foreign Minister said yesterday that Syria would attend the Geneva talks but without any pre-conditions.
In what is expected to add to the opposition’s fury, Assad’s ally Iran has agreed to join the peace talks.
More than 115,000 people have been killed in the civil war so far that has infested the country for more than two years now as Assad regime and the rebels trying to topple the President are mired in a bloody conflict.
