French PM decries MPs for meeting Assad
France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls has slammed a move by three French lawmakers to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“I want to condemn this initiative with the greatest strength,” Valls said on Thursday.
“For parliamentarians to go without warning to meet a butcher.... I think it was a moral failing,” he said.
A French Parliamentary delegation headed by French Senator Jean-Pierre Vial, Chairman of the Syrian-French friendship Committee, met with Assad on Wednesday.
“We met Bashar al-Assad for a good hour. It went very well,” Jacques Myard, an MP from the opposition Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) party, also said.
The French lawmaker described the trip as “a personal mission to see what is going on, to hear [and] listen.”
According to the Syrian state television, the two sides had discussed “the state of Syrian-French relations, as well as the developments in the Arab world and Europe, especially with regard to terrorism.”
During the meeting, Assad said fighting terrorism demands real political will and belief in the fact that the outcome will be in the interest of all people while the dangers will threaten all countries.
“If this issue could be tackled based on this principle, surely we will soon witness tangible positive results,” added the president.
France cut diplomatic ties with Syria in 2012 and supports the militants in Syria, who seek the removal of Assad from power.
The US and its allies, including France, have been throwing their weight behind Takfiri ISIL militants, currently wreaking havoc on Syria and Iraq, in past years.
Reports say US military instructors trained the militants at a secret base in Jordan in 2012. According to reports, some 1,000 French nationals from a wide range of backgrounds are estimated to have left the European country to join the Takfiri militants in Iraq and Syria. Some 400 of them are thought to be currently operating on the ground, while almost 50 were killed.
YH/NN/HMV
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