If the American administration want to support Al-Qaeda - go ahead. That's what we have to tell them, go ahead and support Al-Qaeda, but don't talk about rebels and free Syrian army.

With the time, yes we can be worried, because the secular state should reflect secular society, and this secular society, with the time, if you don't get rid of those terrorists and these extremists and the Wahabi style, of course it will influence at least the new and the coming generations.

It is not my democracy as a person; it is our democracy as a society.

To have opposition ? We have it, and you can go and meet with them. We have some of them within the government, we have some of them outside the government. They are opposition. We have it.

As a state, as a government, in 2001 we proposed to the United Nations to empty or to get rid of every WMD in the Middle East, and the United States stood against that proposal. This is our conviction and policy.

Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East.

We never said that the majority [of the terrorists] are not Syrians, but we said that the minority is what they call "free Syrian army." That's what we said.