Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in a new interview with Italian media outlet Rai that his country was not a breeding ground for the Islamic State group and blamed the West for the emergence of the terror group, reported The Guardian.
"I can tell you Daesh doesn't have the natural incubator, social incubator, within Syria," Assad said in a television interview with the outlet, using an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group.
Assad said the Islamic extremists who have trained in Syria were only able to do so thanks to "the support of the Turks and the Saudis and Qatari, and of course the Western policy that supported the terrorists in different ways. They can be strong as long as they have strong support from different states, whether Middle Eastern states or Western states."
Assad's claims have been backed by former director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn, the highest ranking intelligence official to go on record speaking out against the Obama administration's decision to arm the extremist groups in Syria fighting to overthrow the government.
Flynn suggested in a recent Al Jazeera interview that the Obama administration knew that its arming of extremist rebels in Syria would lead to the creation of an Islamic State group but willfully continued and supported the establishment of such a Salafist principality because it would further help the West in its effort to oust Assad.
Assad continued: "According to what some American officials said, including Hillary Clinton, Al Qaeda was created by the Americans with the help of Saudi Wahabi money and ideology, and of course, many other officials said the same in the United States. And ISIS and al-Nusra, they are offshoots of Al Qaeda...Regarding ISIS, it started in Iraq, it was established in Iraq in 2006, and the leader was al-Zarqawi who was killed by the American forces then, so it was established under the American supervision in Iraq, and the leader of ISIS today, who is called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he was in the American prisons, and he was put in New York in their prisons, and he was released by them. So, it wasn't in Syria, it didn't start in Syria, it started in Iraq, and it started before that in Afghanistan according to what they said."
Meanwhile, President Obama, galvanized in part by the Paris attacks, continued to insist Thursday that the only way to end Syria's five-year-long civil war is to remove Assad from office.
"The reason is not simply because of my opinion of him. It is because it is unimaginable that you can stop the civil war here when the overwhelming majority of people in Syria consider him to be a brutal, murderous dictator," Obama said, reported The Wall Street Journal. "He cannot regain legitimacy. And if in fact he is still in power, regardless of what outside powers do, there is still going to be large portions of the population that are fighting."
According to an ORB International and IIACSS poll from September, 47 percent of Syrians believe Assad has had a net positive influence on the country, while about half said he had a negative influence. That can be compared to Obama's 49 percent job approval rating.
Assad said it would be too risky to conduct a presidential transition while major parts of the country were still rebel-controlled.
"This timetable starts after starting defeating terrorism. You cannot achieve anything politically while you have the terrorists taking over many areas in Syria," he said. "If we talk after that, one year and a half to two years is enough for any transition."
Last week, 19 countries, including Assad's allies, set a deadline of Jan. 1 for beginning peace talks. They also signed a United Nations statement that calls for a ceasefire to be agreed upon by May 14, 2016, and for free elections to be held the following year, reported BBC.
More than 250,000 people have been killed in the conflict, and millions have fled.
