“I can tell you ISIS doesn’t have the natural incubator, social incubator, within Syria. This is something very good and very assuring,” he said in a recent interview with the Italian TV channel RAI UNO, as reported by SANA.
Assad also said foreign-backed terrorist groups operating in Syria are the main obstacle to finding a political solution to the country’s crisis.
“You cannot achieve anything politically while you have the terrorists taking over many areas in Syria, and they’re going to be – they are already – the main obstacle to any real political advancement,” he said.
President Assad criticized the West’s “double standards” toward terrorism in different parts of the world, citing the Paris attacks as an example.
“We’ve been suffering from that (terrorism) for the past five years. We feel for the French as we feel for the Lebanese a few days before that, and for the Russians regarding the airplane that’s been shot down over Sinai. Does the world, especially the West, feel for those people, or only for the French?”
The Syrian president was referring to the terrorist bombings in Beirut on November 12, when at least 43 people were killed and nearly 240 were injured.
Another bombing aboard a Russian plane on October 31 led to the aircraft’s crash and killed 244 people. ISIS claimed responsibility for both incidents.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Syrian leader censured Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the West for supporting “terrorists in different ways since the beginning of the crisis.”
President Assad also touched on his trip to the Russian capital, Moscow, on October 20, describing it as “fruitful.”
“It was a trip to discuss the military situation, because it happened nearly two weeks after the Russians started the airstrikes, and to discuss the political process,” he said in reference to the Russian military campaign that began in Syria upon Damascus’ request back in September.
The crisis in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has claimed the lives of over 250,000 people so far and displaced nearly half the country’s population of about 23 million, either internally our outside its borders.
Syrian forces have recently been making rapid advances against terrorists in several parts of the country under Russian air cover, which began on September 30; Press TV reported.
S/SH