US special representative for Syria: Washington no longer seeking to topple Bashar Assad

Baku. 18 December. REPORT.AZ / “US refused to demand the resignation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a condition for the settlement of the Syrian conflict”, US special representative for Syria James Jeffrey said.

Report informs citing the Interfax that he spoke at the Atlantic Council meeting titled 'The future of U.S. policy in Syria'. .

“We would like to see a fundamentally different regime in Syria. However, it doesn’t have to be a regime that we Americans would embrace as, say, qualifying to join the European Union if the European Union would take Middle Eastern countries,” Jeffrey said.

According to him, the US special representative in Syria said that Assad needed to compromise as he had not yet won the brutal seven-year civil war, estimating that some 100,000 armed opposition fighters remained in Syria.

Estimating that Syria would need $300-400 billion to rebuild, Jeffrey warned that Western powers and international financial institutions would not commit funds without a change of course. “There is a strong readiness on the part of Western nations not to ante up money for that disaster unless we have some kind of idea that the government is ready to compromise and thus not create yet another horror in the years ahead,” he said.

Jeffrey also said that the United States wanted a Syria that does not wage chemical weapons attacks or torture its own citizens.