Daesh much easier to defeat without Turkish, Saudi support for it: Syrian official

An adviser to the Syrian president says Daesh would be defeated much more easily if some regional countries, especially Turkey and Saudi Arabia, did not fund and support the terrorist group.

In an interview with Russia Today published on Thursday, Bouthaina Shaaban cited foreign-backed groups as the key obstacles to peace talks aimed at ending the crisis in the country.

“If it were not for the support by regional parties – in particular Turkey and Saudi Arabia, it would not be difficult to defeat ISIL. But the money, the resources, the facilitation comes from these countries to ISIL,” she said, using another name for Daesh.

The official, who is President Bashar al-Assad’s political and media adviser, further censured the US and the West for the “political support” they lend to Daesh Takfiris.

She touched upon peace talks between the Syrian government and the so-called opposition, saying they have not been able to have a dialog because each opposition group “belongs to a different country” and is financed by them.

“This is the only opposition in the world that are agents of foreign countries against their own country,” she added.

Earlier this month, the United States and Russia agreed on a cessation of hostilities in the Arab country, which has been planned to take effect there on February 27 midnight Damascus time.

On Friday, members of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), a 17-nation grouping comprising Russia and the US among others, are to meet in Geneva to work out further details of the agreement on the cessation of hostilities.

UN envoy Staffan De Mistura will afterwards announce possible plans for the resumption of UN-backed peace talks for the resolution of the country’s nearly five-year-long crisis.

Shaaban expressed hope that the planned cessation of hostilities would succeed in keeping “the territorial integrity and the unity of Syria,” stressing that the Syrian people have fought for five years “against any partition of Syria.”

UN on Syria

A UN official told the Valdai discussion forum in Moscow on Thursday that the deadly conflict in Syria has robbed it of four decades of social and economic progress.

Deputy executive secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia Abdullah Dardari said the only focus in Syria right now should be “on the agreement between Moscow and Washington for the cessation of hostilities – this is the way out.”

“We have frankly lost five years of modern history of Syria, and we have lost more than 40 years of social and economic development in the country,” he said.

Nearly five years of turmoil has claimed the lives of more than 470,000 people in Syria and displaced millions.

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