Updated 3:30 pm: A former senior Russian official who recently met Bashar al-Assad said the Syrian president told him the "active phase" of the war in Syria will be over this year but that the government would continue to fight "terrorists," state-run Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported on Monday.
Sergei Stepashin, who served as prime minister in 1999 under then-President Boris Yeltsin and now heads a charitable organization, met Assad in Damascus last week during a visit to the Middle East, according to Russian news reports.
"To my question about how military issues were going, this is what Assad said: 'This year the active phase of military action in Syria will be ended. After that we will have to shift to what we have been doing all the time – fighting terrorists'," Itar-Tass quoted Sergei Stepashin as saying.
Stepashin said they had also discussed economic cooperation between Syria and Russia, Itar-Tass reported.
Russia joined the United States in organizing peace talks that began in January in Geneva between Assad's government and its foes. But no agreement was reached and it appears unlikely a new round will start anytime soon, in part because of high tension between Russia and the West over Ukraine.
Assad has lost control of large swathes of northern and eastern Syria to Islamist rebels and foreign jihadis. But the army, backed by forces from Lebanon's Hezbollah and other allies, have driven rebels back from around Damascus and secured most of central Syria.
The head of Hezbollah said in an interview published on Monday that Assad would stand for re-election this year and that he no longer faced a threat of being overthrown.
(Reuters)
Related- الجزء الثاني من حوار السيد حسن نصرلله مع جريدة السفير
- Nasrallah confirms Hezbollah strike on Israeli forces in Shebaa
- Exclusive: Some 80 militants killed near Syrian capital
- 13 Terrorists Killed in Homs by Their Own Car Bomb
- ‘Al-Nusra’s mysterious leader trapped by Syrian army’
- SAA Launches Wide Military Operations against Terrorists in Homs, Deir Ezzor
- ستيباشين نقلا عن الأسد: أنا لست يانوكوفيتش
- «رنكوس» ترفع الـراية البيضاء وتستعـد للاستسلام عبر «تسوية»
- انجاز استخباراتي سوري: مسلحون يساهمون بإنجازات الجيش السوري
- بداية مفاجآت «حرب القلمون الأخيرة»
- تحرك إيراني وروسي لتلقين أردوغان "درسا"بسبب التصعيد التركي في كسب