Speaking at a news conference in Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday, Omran al-Zoubi said, “foreign intelligence services try to say that there are moderate and extremist terrorism in Syria; there are numerous documetns and evidence proving that they are all terrorist groups and the Syrian government and army are fighting against terrorism”.
“Aside from their different names, they have no other difference; all you here such as Daesh (The al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) and others are terrorist groups,” he added.
Syria peace talks
Speaking on a long-awaited peace conference dubbed as ‘Geneva 2’ aiming to find a solution to end the deadly crisis in Syria, al-Zoubi said, “any agreement in Geneva 2 will be put on a referendum among Syrian people, because any deal without consensus of all Syrian people is worthless”.
He further said there will be no transitional government in Syria following the talks, a controversial pre-condition set by the foreign-backed Syrian opposition for attending the conference.
The Syrian minister said, “ I recommend all in the opposition and others to read the Geneva statement carefully; It is going to be result of a Syrian-Syrian talk”.
He further warned the opposition groups and their supporters for entering the talks with wrong reasons, saying that, “ those who come to the talks for serving goals of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, United States, France or others, are making a mistake”.
“We’ll not forgive those who have spent billions of dollars to massacre Syrians and destroy their country. Syria was destroyed deliberately and in an organized way, and this is the Syrian people who should decide whom to forgive.”
About other countries’ presence in the internationally-brokered talks, al-Zoubi said, “We definitely want Iran present in the conference at the same level the other countries are”.
Adra 'genocide'
The Syrian information minister pointed to the recent massacre in Syria’s Adra, located near Damascus, where al-Qaeda militants attacked the town and killed a large number of civilians and said, contrary to what many try to make people believe, the ongoing crisis in Adra is not a ‘sectarian conflict’ and people who got killed in there didn’t belong to a single group.
“What is going on in Adra is a genocide,” he added.
Al-Nusra Front militants, al-Qaeda’s main branch in Syria war, attacked Adra in the Rif Dimashq governorate in mid-December 2013 and started executing civilians, some of them family by family.
It is not clear hown many people have been killed in the town since access has been limited but some media reports indicate more than 80 people have been killed while the number is feared to be much higher.
The war in Syria started in March 2011, when pro-reform protests turned into a massive insurgency following the intervention of Western and regional states.
The unrest, which took in terrorist groups from across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, has transpired as one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history.
According to the United Nations, more than 120,000 people have been killed and millions displaced due to the turmoil that has gripped Syria for over two years.
SHI/SHI