The US Secretary of State declared that military pressure may be needed to oust Syria’s President Bashar Assad. John Kerry’s remarks came as it emerges that the US, along with Turkey, have started training Syrian rebels.
During a meeting of Gulf foreign ministers at Riyadh Air Base, Kerry said “Ultimately a combination of diplomacy and pressure will be needed to bring about a political transition. Military pressure particularly may be necessary given President Assad’s reluctance to negotiate seriously,”according to AFP.
He added “He’s lost any semblance of legitimacy, but we have no higher priority than disrupting and defeating Daesh and other terror networks”
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RT reports: Last December, President Assad told French reporters, “let’s be honest: Had Qatar not paid money to those terrorists at that time, and had Turkey not supported them logistically, and had not the West supported them politically, things would have been different. If we in Syria had problems and mistakes before the crisis, which is normal, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the events had internal causes”.
Syria’s president criticized the actions of the US-led coalition targeting the militants in Syria. He called its air strikes “merely cosmetic” and said that “terrorism cannot be destroyed from the air.” Assad added that “saying that the alliance’s airstrikes are helping us is not true.”
What’s more, he explained that Syria was fighting against “not only gangs”, but also states that support them with “billions of dollars.”
Last November, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on the issue, saying that: “Russia condemns the use of extremist groups in efforts to change the regime [in Syria].”
