President Assad: Cessation of military operations requires preventing terrorists from using it to improve their position

President Bashar Assad asserted that the cessation of military operations requires preventing the terrorists from using it to improve their position, as well as preventing other countries, especially Turkey, from sending more recruits, more terrorists, more armaments, or any kind of logistical support to terrorists, adding that the Russian and the Iranian support were essential for the Syrian Army to make its advancement.

This came in an interview given by President Assad to Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Question 1: You have recently allowed humanitarian aid to go into seven besieged areas. Some claim there are at least 486,000 people living in those areas, some for even more than three years. Why did this happen so late in the conflict?

President Assad: Actually, it hasn’t happened recently; it’s been there since the beginning of the crisis. We never make embargo on any region in Syria. There’s a difference between embargo and the army surrounding a certain area because of the militants, and that’s natural in such a security case or military case. But the problem with those areas is that the militants themselves took the food and the basic needs of those people, the people there, and gave it to their militants or sell it to the people with very high prices.

As a government, we never prevent any area from having assistance, including the areas under the control of ISIS, like al-Raqqa in the north that’s been under their control, and before that al-Nusra for nearly three years now. We’ve been sending them all the salaries for the retired people, all the salaries for the employees today, and we send them vaccines for the children.......http://sana.sy/en/?p=70035
21/2/16
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Related:
 

• Assad said the smuggling of fighters from Saudi Arabia via Turkey