Damascus says ready to join UN-sponsored peace talks

PanARMENIAN.Net - A close adviser to Syrian President Bashar al Assad said on Wednesday, December 23, Damascus was ready to join UN-sponsored peace talks with its position bolstered by both Russian backing and the West's retreat from a hardline anti-Assad approach, Reuters reports.

Bouthaina Shaaban said her government approved of UN resolutions passed last week endorsing an international road map for a Syria peace process, a rare display of unity among global powers on a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people.

"We accept these resolutions," she told Beirut-based al Mayadeen television in the first official Syrian remarks on the matter.

The resolutions gave UN blessing to a plan negotiated earlier in Vienna that calls for a ceasefire, talks between the Syrian government and opposition, and a roughly two-year timeline to create a unity government and hold elections.

Shaaban said Damascus perceived a softening of the West's stance on Assad driven by a spillover of Islamic State militant attacks into its own communities - most recently in Paris on November 13 when shootings and suicide bombings killed 130 people.

"It was not easy for the West to retreat. This is the first time that the West's word has been defeated over Syria ... The Russian strategy in getting these (diplomatic) understandings is successful and clever and will bear fruit," Shaaban said.

"The Russian intervention has had great importance in the Syrian crisis," she told al-Mayadeen television.

"We are now in a much better position that we were in... There is real international partnership to combat terror, a big understanding of (our) position and the turnaround that started a year ago is now coming to a full circle," Shaaban said.