UN Envoy: Al-Assad Part of the Solution in Syria

Local Editor

The United Nations envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura confirmed Friday that "any peaceful solution to the fighting in Syria must involve President Bashar al-Assad.

"President al-Assad is part of the solution," de Mistura told a joint press conference with Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in Vienna.

He further stated: "I will continue to have very important discussions with him," noting that "the only solution is a political solution."

De Mistura, who was in Damascus this week where he met with Assad, is due to deliver a report on his mission to the UN Security Council on February 17.

If no solution to the conflict is found, "the only one who takes advantage of it is "ISIS" [Daesh]," de Mistura said, referring to the terrorists who have taken over parts of Syria and Iraq.

The group is a "monster waiting for this conflict to take place in order to be able to take advantage," he said.

In a poll on Thursday, 53 percent of residents in opposition-held areas of Syria's second city of Aleppo - which has seen some of the country's worst violence since July 2012 - said they favored de Mistura's October proposal of a "freeze" in fighting.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team