Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Wednesday his country was not a breeding ground for the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group, blaming the creation of the jihadist organisation on the West.
“I can tell you Daesh doesn’t have the natural incubator, social incubator, within Syria,” he said in a television interview with Italian national broadcaster Rai, using the Arabic acronym for the IS group.
Jihadists who trained in Syria for the Paris massacres and other attacks had done so due to “the support of the Turks and the Saudis and Qatari, and of course the Western policy that supported the terrorists in different ways,” he insisted.
IS “didn’t start in Syria, it started in Iraq, and it started before that in Afghanistan,” he said, quoting former British prime minister Tony Blair as saying “the Iraqi war helped create ISIS”.
Blair’s “confession is the most important evidence,” Assad added.
Last week’s deadly Paris attacks, in which 129 people were killed in a wave of shootings and suicide bombings across the French capital claimed by IS, have galvanised international momentum for a diplomatic solution to Syria’s civil war.
More than 250,000 people have died in the conflict and millions have fled, as IS has seized control of large swathes of territory across Syria and Iraq which it rules under its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law.
But Assad said there could be no transition schedule for elections while parts of the country were still rebel-controlled.
“This timetable starts after starting defeating terrorism. You cannot achieve anything politically while you have the terrorists taking over many areas in Syria,” he said.
“If we talk after that, one year and a half to two years is enough for any transition.” Assad’s continued grip on power has seriously strained relations between the US and France — firm backers of Syria’s uprising — and Russia, one of the regime’s staunchest allies.
