Canada’s Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan says Bashar Assad has to go, adding his voice to the calls for Assad to step aside.
“I’m of the opinion that President Assad, he does need to go, given the complexity of the problem and the horrible atrocities that have been committed to his own people,” said Sajjan from the Halifax International Security Forum.
Sajjan said Canada’s new Liberal government, like the American government, is not ready to back down on its desire to see Assad go. He said Canada is trying to stay focused on the “wider picture” and remember that Assad instigated the current conflict in Syria, even as ISIS gains ground in the country.
“What we’ve got to keep in mind here is how did this whole problem start? That Assad’s regime has killed more of its own people than even Daesh (ISIS) actually has,” Sajjan said.
Syrian topped the least peaceful country in the world, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan, according to this year’s edition of an annual report from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
The Assad regime’s brutal war he has been waging on the Syrian people led Syria to replace Afghanistan as the least peaceful country in 2014. Over 300,000 people have been killed in the ongoing war, while nearly 14 million people have been displaced as a result of the Assad regime’s barrel bombing of Syria’s towns and cities.
The Syrian Coalition reiterates that any political solution in Syria must conform to the Geneva Communique and relevant UN Security Council resolutions, stressing that Bashar al-Assad must not be permitted to have a role in any stage of political settlement.
Secretary of the political committee Anas al-Abda said that “we will not accept the survival of Bashar al-Assad for a single day in the transitional phase,” stressing the need to find a political solution acceptable to the Syrian people in accordance with the Geneva I Communique.
Abdah points out that the Syrian people will not forget the crimes committed by the Assad regime against children and women for nearly five years. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Agencies)
