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Some players in Syrian conflict back terror: Iran

Tuesday, 03 May 2016 8:58 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 04 May 2016 2:55 AM ]

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian

A senior Iranian official says certain parties intervening in the Syrian crisis lent support to terrorist groups in line with an agenda of confronting Damascus in an armed conflict.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remark during a meeting with Secretary General of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Christian Masset in Tehran.

“From the onset, some players were pursuing the military approach, and in line with that, they supported terrorists to achieve their goals,” he said.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, however, was laying emphasis on a political solution from the beginning and simultaneously backed the political reform process in Syria as well as the dispatch of humanitarian aid to the country.”

Since March 2011, the United States and its regional allies, in particular Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, have been staging a proxy war against Syria.

According to a February report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced nearly half of the pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond Syria’s borders.

Amir-Abdollahian further stressed that the international community should adopt a sound definition of what constitutes a terror group in Syria.

“Despite the agreements reached in Geneva concerning the ceasefire in Syria, some armed groups unfortunately adopted an aggressive approach, violating the truce in a coordinated, attempt with Daesh and al-Qaeda,” he said.

For his part, Masset (seen below) acknowledged that Tehran and Paris shared commonalities in their positions on a potential solution to the crisis in Syria.

He listed some instances of such shared views as “fighting terrorism, support for the democratic process in Syria, and the notion that the country’s fate had to be determined by its people.”

The UN has hosted weeks of on-and-off peace talks aimed ultimately at ending Syria’s devastating five-year conflict.

A landmark partial ceasefire took effect in Syria on February 27. A recent surge of violence, however, has shaken it.

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