Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said “full victory” would be achieved once the “lands in Idlib, north of Aleppo, and east to Euphrates” are put under government control, speaking alongside his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim Jaafari in Damascus on Monday.
“I cannot say it is a full victory until we regain all of our lands in Idlib, north of Aleppo, and east of the Euphrates; then the Syrian sovereignty would entirely be restored.”
“We say: because there are innocent Syrian citizens in Idlib, we said that liberating Idlib by reconciliation is much better that shedding blood. Our support to the Russian-Turkish agreement was due to our keenness to not shed blood, but we cannot remain silent as the current situation continues in Idlib, if the Al-Nusra Front refuses to submit to this agreement.”
“Regarding the opening of the Naseeb or the Abu Kamal crossing: if we see what happened during the past years, we would find that the terrorists were controlling and closing those crossings, and that the countries supporting them were in a firm attitude against the opening of such crossings. Because, in the modern age, one factor of unity is not geography, nor the common history. They are basics. Rather, it is the common interests which such crossings create among people. It is what lasts. This is why we looked through the wider perspective and we did not look through the narrow perspective whether the states conspired against us or not, we looked through the interest of the Syrian and Jordanian people, and we are looking through the perspective of the Syrian and Iraqi people to open Abu Kamal crossing, hopefully, as I understood, very soon.”