Assad
© EPA
Western leaders "behave with duplicity and act according to their selfish interests, without understanding the reality or nature" of the Syrian conflict, Syrian President Bashar Assad has said.

Bashar Assad also said Monday his country is being confronted by a major offensive by Islamist extremists.

"The country is facing a takfiri ideology," Assad said, using a term for Sunni Muslim extremists.

"This is terrorism without limits, an international scourge that could strike anywhere and anytime," he said, quoted by the official SANA news agency.

Assad made the remarks while receiving what SANA said was a delegation of "academics, researchers and activists" from Australia who had came to express "solidarity" with his government.

The president also criticised Western leaders, who "behave with duplicity and act according to their selfish interests, without understanding the reality or nature" of the Syrian conflict.



The West has started admitting that Bashar Assad heading Syria is not that dangerous as terrorists could be in case they take control over the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview.

"Both in private conversations and public comments some western politicians have started voicing their thoughts that given that Jihadists and terrorists who are building up their influence in Syria, occupying territories, immediately introducing Sharia law after it, massacring minorities and burning people alive only because they are adherents of a different faith, Bashar Assad being the leader of Syria is a lesser threat for the country than terrorists taking over it," the Russian Foreign Minister stated.

Syrian President Bashar Assad hasn't asked Russia to assure his safety in case he steps down, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview.

"We have received no such requests either from Assad or anyone in Damascus," the Minister said answering a query from a journalist.

Lavrov also reminded that Assad "repeatedly said he wasn't going to leave his country and wished to stay with his people and fulfill his duties".

According to the Russian Foreign Minister, Assad might run for presidency next year.

"Indeed, he said he didn't exclude the possibility of running for presidency once again next year. He will make a decision closer to an election and it will depend on whether he would feel the support from the people," Lavrov underlined.

Western politicians are beginning to openly acknowledge that President Bashar al-Assad staying in power would be the "best-case scenario" for Syria. Russia has repeatedly warned that Syria might become a breeding ground for Islamist terrorism if the opposition wins. Now it looks like the West is at last awakening to the threat.

"Bashar al-Assad must go," the West kept saying it over and over. Not so long ago, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared that no matter how well Syria's chemical disarmament proceeded, Assad would have to resign anyway because he had lost legitimacy.

But the latest meeting of the Friends of Syria in London marked a sharp turnaround after Western countries signaled that they no longer considered Assad's resignation a desired result and wouldn't mind if he ran for the presidency in the future election.

Sergei Demidenko, a research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Assessments and Analysis, looks into the matter.

"It is now clear to everyone that Bashar al-Assad has the backing of a greater part of the population, that the opposition is dominated by radical Islamists, which particularly frightens the West, that the secular opposition is weak and incompetent and if the Assad regime falls, nothing would prevent the Islamists from seizing power. Those are the circumstances that prompted the West to change its attitude. What has long been mulled in diplomatic and political circles behind closed doors is now becoming an official stance," he said.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden echoed in his speech at a Washington conference against terrorism that Assad's victory over the opposition would be the best-case scenario both for Syria and the entire Middle East, whereas Assad's defeat would plunge Syria into a protracted regional conflict and cause the country to split.

Commenting on Hayden's statement, Fyodor Lukyanov, chief editor of the Russia in Global Politics magazine, remarked: "All sober-minded US experts now agree that any scenario in which the opposition wins will be worse than everything else. Whatever Assad is like, he kept Syria stable. If he is allowed to win, the problem could at least be postponed for a while... The United States' reluctance to engage in any sort of conflict in the Middle East has increased exponentially since September. Hayden's statement indicates that it's no longer a marginal viewpoint."

A change of mood in the Arab world has also had its effect. Qatar has visibly cooled to the idea of arming Syrian militants. Saudi Arabia, though remaining their key sponsor, is losing control over the situation.

"Riyadh supports the Jabhat an-Nusra organization. Secretary General of Saudi Arabia's National Security Council Bandar bin Sultan is personally supervising it. But there is another organization in Syria, which is as strong as Jabhat an-Nusra and which swore allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. In other words, Saudi Arabia is losing influence with Islamist structures," Semyon Bagdasarov, a prominent Russian orientalist, told the Voice of Russia.

The West's softening towards Assad raises hope that the upcoming Geneva-2 conference on Syria will produce solutions that would suit all parties concerned.

Source: Voice of Russia, AFP