MOSCOW, August 13. /TASS/. Syria’s government will demonstrate a pragmatic approach and will try to enroll support from the Gulf monarchies and Turkey to the restoration efforts, despite the accusations of their sponsoring militants, a Russian expert told TASS on Monday.
Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said earlier in the day that Arab countries had disbursed $137 billion to finance illegal armed groups fighting in his country.
"Official Damascus will have to negotiate with the Gulf monarchies, with Turkey and other states because it needs enormous sums to revive the country. It will be very difficult to do it without the Arab countries and Ankara," said Ruslan Mamedov, coordinator of Middle East programs of the Russian Council on International Affairs, a think tank.
"I think Damascus is pragmatic enough to see that it would be much better to involve these countries in the restoration process," he said, adding that the Gulf monarchies and Turkey, in turn, would seek cooperation with Damascus as it is winning the war.
According to Mamedov, it is next to impossible either to calculate the exact sum that came to militants in Syria from foreign sponsors or to identify exact sources of financing. "The existence of an external fact is unquestionable. The question is to what extent and who really is responsible for that," he noted. "Syria’s intelligence services have been severely impacted during the war and it will take a titanic effort to retrieve all the documents."