You cannot talk about winning the war as long as there's killing and destruction on daily basis.

The first thing Syrian refugees want is to be able to live within Syria. That means help, humanitarian help, the way we understand it, food, medical care, any other, let's say, basics for the daily life.

On the border area with Lebanon where [Hezbollah forces] want to protect themselves and cooperate with us, but they don't exist all over Syria.

We have to be there to get the evidence like what happened in Aleppo when we had evidence. And because the United States didn't send the team, we sent the evidence to the Russians.

We're talking about one region, bigger regions, not only about Syria. This interlinked region, this intermingled, interlocked, whatever you want to call it ; if you strike somewhere, you have to expect the repercussions somewhere else in different forms in ways you don't expect.

I said we don't pin a lot of hopes of changing administrations [in U.S.] because that context has been going on for more than fifty years now, and that's expected. If they want to continue in the same position of the United States creating problems around the world, that's what they have to do: only interfering in the matters of other nations.

We don't say that we don't have it, we're still secular in Syria, but with the time, this secularism will be eroded.