{"id":16859,"date":"2018-09-30T10:25:37","date_gmt":"2018-09-30T10:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16859"},"modified":"2018-09-30T10:25:37","modified_gmt":"2018-09-30T10:25:37","slug":"syria-calls-on-us-french-turkish-forces-to-withdraw-immediately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16859","title":{"rendered":"Syria calls on US, French, Turkish forces to withdraw immediately"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nUNITED NATIONS: Syria\u2019s foreign minister on Saturday denounced US, French and Turkish forces operating in his country as \u201coccupying forces\u201d and demanded that they leave immediately.
Addressing the UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem also called on Syrian refugees to come home, even though the country\u2019s war is now in its eighth year.
Al-Moualem, who also serves as deputy prime minister, said the foreign forces were on Syrian soil illegally, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, and \u201cwill be dealt with accordingly.\u201d
\u201cThey must withdraw immediately and without any conditions,\u201d he told the assembly.
Al-Moualem insisted that the \u201cwar on terror is almost over\u201d in Syria, where more than 360,000 people have died since 2011, with millions more uprooted from their homes.
He said Damascus would continue \u201cfighting this sacred battle until we purge all Syrian territories\u201d of both terror groups and \u201cany illegal foreign presence.\u201d
The United States has some 2,000 troops in Syria, mainly training and advising both Kurdish forces and Syrian Arabs opposed to President Bashar Assad.
France has more than 1,000 troops on the ground in the war-wracked country.
On the issue of refugees, Al-Moualem said the conditions were fine for them to return, and he blamed \u201csome western countries\u201d for \u201cspreading irrational fears\u201d that prompted refugees to stay away.
\u201cWe have called upon the international community and humanitarian organizations to facilitate these returns,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are politicizing what should be a purely humanitarian issue.\u201d
The United States and the European Union have warned that there will be no reconstruction aid for Syria until there is a political agreement between Assad and the opposition to end the war.
UN diplomats say a recent agreement between Russia and Turkey to set up a buffer zone in the last major rebel stronghold of Idlib has created an opportunity to press ahead with political talks.
The Russian-Turkish deal averted a large-scale assault by Russian-backed Syrian forces on the province, where three million people live.
Al-Moualem however stressed that the agreement had \u201cclear deadlines\u201d and expressed hope that military action will target militants including fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, who \u201cwill be eradicated.\u201d
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura is hoping to soon convene the first meetings of a new committee comprised of government and opposition members to draft a post-war constitution for Syria and pave the way to elections.
Al-Moualem laid out conditions for the Syrian government\u2019s participation in the committee, saying the panel\u2019s work should be restricted \u201cto reviewing the articles of the current constitution,\u201d and warned against interference.
Al-Moualem told the UN General Assembly that Damascus was ready for the voluntary return of refugees who fled during the more than seven-year conflict.
\u201cWe welcome any assistance with reconstruction from those countries that were not part of the aggression on Syria,\u201d he said. \u201cThe countries that offer only conditional assistance or continue to support terrorism, they are neither invited nor welcome to help.\u201d
Al-Moualem told the world that his country\u2019s \u201cbattle against terrorism is almost over\u201d after more than seven years of civil war, vowing the Syrian government will free the country from all \u201cillegitimate\u201d foreign troops.\u00a0
He vehemently restated denials that Damascus has used chemical weapons during the war \u2014 although international investigators have found otherwise \u2014 and he called on all refugees to return home, saying that is a priority for Damascus.
\u201cToday, the situation on the ground is more stable and secure, thanks to combatting terrorism,\u201d he said. \u201cAll conditions are now present for the voluntary return of refugees.\u201d
Idlib has been a relative refuge for people displaced by violence in other parts of the country, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said a full-scale battle for Idlib could unleash \u201ca humanitarian nightmare\u201d surpassing the misery already seen during the war.
\u201cWe fully condemn the use of chemical weapons under any circumstances,\u201d Al-Moallem said. He said countries have lobbed \u201cready-made accusations\u201d at Syria without what he described as any investigation or evidence.
The issue has been a flashpoint at the UN Security Council, with the US and Western countries denouncing Assad over chemical attacks and Russia rejecting the investigators\u2019 findings. The US has twice carried out its own airstrikes in response to the chemical attacks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNITED NATIONS: Syria\u2019s foreign minister on Saturday denounced US, French and Turkish forces operating in his country as \u201coccupying forces\u201d and demanded that they leave immediately.Addressing the UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem also called on Syrian refugees to come home, even though the country\u2019s war is now in its eighth year.Al-Moualem, who also…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}