U.S. Continues to Make Concessions to Russia and Iran, Syrian Opposition Leader Says

A top Syrian opposition official has expressed hope that the next U.S. administration will show more resolve than Obama’s.

Riad Hijab (pictured), a former prime minister in President Bashar Assad’s regime, told Al Jazeera TV that “the American government hasn’t the will power or the resolve to play a more significant role in fulfilling its human and moral duty in light of the catastrophe that has befallen the Syrian people.”

Hijab, currently the chairman of the High Committee of the Syrian negotiations, said: “It’s an administration that continues to make concessions to the Russians and the Iranians in an attempt to contain them. What we need is to coerce the Syrian regime into implementing international resolutions.”

He said that the current US administration is mainly good at talking. “Mouthing slogans is all that it does,” he said. “We hope that the next one will be a lot more serious than the current one, which did nothing to see through the implementation of UN resolutions.”

He said that the Syrian opposition has been in contact with the presidential candidates. “The candidates, especially Clinton, who served as secretary of state when the Syrian crisis erupted, have a clear position about what’s going on in Syria. The other candidate also talks about implementing UN resolutions and the need to reach stability, which will not be reached unless the regime is ousted.”

Asked whether a Clinton victory will bode well for the opposition, Hijab said that “our hope lies mainly in the Syrian people and the fighters on the ground. We hope the new administration will show more resolve, as the president didn’t utter a word about Syria in his address before the United Nations General Assembly, even though it is clearly the most burning international issue currently on the table.”

Hijab also said that the US refused to allow the opposition to review an agreement it reached with Russia. “At first they refused, but eventually they handed it over. We realized that the version we saw was incomplete, and we submitted many queries to them.”