Saudi Arabia says it is ready to support the United States in its so-called war against ISIS by sending ground troops and special forces to Syria.
In an interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung , the Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that other Persian Gulf Arab “countries” were also “ready to allocate forces to fight on the US side,” adding that there were consultations with the Americans to find out what the plan was and what was needed to implement it.
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Press TV reports:
Since 2014, the United States has been leading a campaign in Syria and neighboring Iraq with the declared objective of hitting Daesh.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Saudi foreign minister said the “main idea is that” the territories liberated from the grips of Daesh must be handed over to the armed foreign-backed Syrian opposition groups to prevent the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement, Iran and the Syrian government from wresting control of them.
Jubeir also reiterated Riyadh’s stance regarding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying he must step down, claiming that the upcoming Geneva peace talks was to organize the political transition to the establishment of a “new Syria without Assad.”
A fresh round of UN-led negotiations is scheduled to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday, involving the Syrian government and representatives from armed opposition groups.
Damascus has repeatedly blamed the six-year-old militancy in Syria on some Western states and their regional allies, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Jubeir’s comments come as the Saudi regime has been engaged in a full-scale unsuccessful campaign against its southern impoverished neighbor Yemen since March 2015, in an attempt to bring back to power Yemen’s President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who has resigned, and undermine the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.
Niamh Harris