Syrian President Bashar al-Assad endorsed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call today for an international conference to be convened on Nov. 11-12 in Damascus, to discuss organizing the return of 5.6 million Syrian refugees back to Syria.
This is an important process. The Syrian government of Assad now controls areas of the country that contain some 85-90% of Syria’s population. The return of refugees would stabilize the process further, and set the stage to take the economic and physical reconstruction of Syria. It could also possibly move forward the stalled peace process. But there appear to be nations in the West, including the United States, and also Turkey, that oppose that.
President Assad met in Damascus Oct. 29 with Putin’s special envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentiev to consolidate some of the plan, this is a UN-facilitated process that has been stalled for several months.
