Syrian government seeks to consolidate army and recapture southwest

The southwest, near the borders with Jordan and Israel, remains one of the big chunks of Syria still outside Assad's control, which has recovered swathes of the country with the help of Russia.

By REUTERS
Updated: JUNE 2, 2018 16:44
A Free Syrian Army fighter prays after eating his iftar (breaking fast) meal during the holy month of Ramadan in the rebel-held town of Dael, Syria May 30, 2018. (photo credit: REUTERS/ALAA AL-FAQIR)
A Free Syrian Army fighter prays after eating his iftar (breaking fast) meal during the holy month of Ramadan in the rebel-held town of Dael, Syria May 30, 2018.
(photo credit: REUTERS/ALAA AL-FAQIR)
BEIRUT - The Syrian government wants to recapture insurgent territory in the southwest through a settlement in which fighters accept state rule or leave, the foreign minister said on Saturday.
The Syrian regime under Bashar Assad plans to disarm militias supporting the regime's civil war, including Iranian-backed militias, according to the Syrian Human Rights Monitoring Organization.
The process of disarming the militia's includes the integration of soldiers into regular units of the Syrian army or, alternatively, their release from any military service.
Walid al-Moualem also said the United States must withdraw from the Tanf base in the southeast. Damascus has not engaged in talks about the country's south, and any agreement over that region must include the pullout of US forces, he said.
The southwest, near the borders with Jordan and Israel, remains one of the big chunks of Syria still outside the control of the state, which has recovered swathes of the country with the help of Russian jets and Iran-backed militias.
Rebel factions hold stretches of Quneitra and Deraa provinces in the southwest, bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, while Syrian army troops and allied forces control nearby territory.
A "de-escalation" deal, which Russia, the United States and Jordan brokered, has contained fighting there since last year. Washington voiced concern about reports of an impending army offensive, and warned it would take "firm and appropriate measures" in response to any violations of the ceasefire.
US forces are based in a southern desert pocket further east at Tanf, a strategic highway border crossing with Iraq.
Moualem said the Syrian military had dropped leaflets calling on insurgents in the southwest to either surrender their weapons and settle with the state, or leave.
"We seek, initially, to solve this issue in the ways we have got used to working with, which are reconciliations. If it does not work, that's a different conversation," he told a news conference in Damascus.

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Russia has said only Syrian army troops should be at the southern border with Jordan and Israel, which has waged air strikes in Syria to curb what it fears is Iran's expanding influence.
Tehran supports Moscow's effort to impose Syrian government control over the south, a senior Iranian security official was quoted as saying on Saturday.
Moualem also said Damascus had communicated with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but no negotiation process had started over the fate of their territory in the north and east.
He said Raqqa city, which the Kurdish-led SDF militias seized from Islamic State with US support, "must be rebuilt and liberated" from any foreign presence.


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Syrian Civil War