Valdai Club

On February 24, 2016, the Valdai Discussion Club hosted a meeting of Bouthaina Shaaban, an aide to the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, with the Club experts and journalists of Russian and international media, dedicated to prospects of peace settlement in Syria.

Shaaban hopes that the recent US-Russian agreement on the terms of ceasefire in Syria will become the first step toward the solution of the Syrian crisis. "Once terrorists see that two great powers agreed on something, probably some good results will be achieved," she said.

Shaaban thanked Russia for its diplomatic support over the past five years. "Russian diplomacy is so different from that of the West. Russia, along with China, has consequently vetoed resolutions directed against Syria," she said.

"Relations with Russia are built on trust and confidence," Shaaban stressed.

Russia does not deal with our country as a colonial power," she went on to say.
"We are happy with cooperation with Russia. We feel we have a good partner, fighting terrorism, and helping Syria end this war," she said.

When asking a journalist's question if Syria could be decentralized, as some Syrian Kurdish leaders recently suggested, Shaaban said this option was unacceptable. "Syrian people will never accept partition of Syria," she said. But some countries want Syrian state to be destroyed, she added, specifically referring to Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

While discussing the issue of refugees fleeing the war in Syria, Shaaban said that the Syrian government would speed up its efforts to bring back all refugees, "when real steps will be taken for political settlement."

Shaaban was confident that her country would be rebuilt despite the huge scale of devastation caused by the war. "Damascus was destroyed twenty times" during the thousands of years of its existence, she said. "When the war is over, Syrians with the help of friends and allies will rebuild the country," Shaaban added.