Syrian government forces are winning the war with rebels and would not rest while a single enemy fighter remained at large, Syria’s prime minister Wael Halki said today.
Maintaining Syria’s unyielding response to Western calls for president Bashar al-Assad to step aside, Mr Halki said the era of “threats and intimidation has gone, never to return, while the era of victory and pride is being created now on Syrian soil”.
He was speaking during a visit to Iran, which has provided military support and billions of dollars in economic aid to Assad during a two-year-old civil war that has killed 100,000 people and shows little sign of being halted by diplomacy.
The United Nations said on Monday that a long-delayed “Geneva 2” peace conference would go ahead on January 22nd.
The government and the political opposition have both said they will attend, but rebel fighters on the ground have scorned the talks.