DUBAI, October 22 (RIA Novosti) – Syrian President Bashar Assad has said he might run in next year’s presidential election.
“I personally don’t see any obstacles to running in the presidential election,” Assad said in an interview with Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV channel, broadcast Monday, adding that the will of the Syrian people was important.
A senior Syrian governmental official said Thursday an international peace conference on Syria backed by Russia and the United States will take place on November 23-24. The Geneva-2 conference will proceed despite leading Syrian opposition groups’ continuing reluctance to participate, Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said at a press conference in Moscow.
The conference is meant to bring the Syrian government and the opposition to the negotiating table in hope of ending the 2 1/2-year-long civil strife in the Middle Eastern country, which has cost at least 100,000 lives to date, according to UN figures.
But Assad told Al Mayadeen that factors required for the holding of the conference were “not yet in place.”
