Qatar’s foreign minister cautioned that Russia’s plan on Syria fails to tackle the root cause of the crisis in Syria, being Bashar al-Assad, Reuters reported.
“We believe strongly that the Syrian regime, namely Bashar al-Assad, is the real cause,” he said.
Qatar is among Sunni Arab countries that have joined in or supported U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria. However, it has questioned the lack of action by Western powers against Assad’s government.
“We can’t come together and say, ’Bravo, you are our ally in fighting the terrorists which you (Assad) either created or brought in’,” Attiyah told Reuters in the interview at Qatar’s U.N. mission.
Attiyah said those fighting Assad on the ground needed to be given more sophisticated means to tackle the government’s “barrel bombing machine.”
“They need to be given the means to defend themselves,” he said. “Only then will Bashar understand he needs to come to the table, to have this political solution with him departing.”
The United States admitted last week that U.S.-trained Syrian rebels had deserted and given weapons to al Qaeda-linked groups, and Attiyah questioned whether the strategy of training rebels to fight Islamic State rather than Assad was the best way forward.
“We have not treated the root of the cause. You cannot bring Syrian people and force them to go and fight Islamic State only,” he said. “Their cause is not Islamic State, their cause is the regime. They will fight Islamic State, but they need to fight the regime first which created Islamic State.”
He defended Qatar’s efforts to aid Syrians fleeing the conflict in their country, responding to criticism that Gulf countries were not taking in any refugees since the conflict broke out four years ago.
He said Doha had spent some $1.6 billion in aid during that period and that since the conflict began the number of Syrians in Qatar had increased from 20,000 to 54,000.
Shi’ite Muslim Iran is involved in a number of conflicts in Arab countries – including Iraq, Syria and Yemen – to strong opposition from the Sunni Arab states. The deaths in Mina in Saudi Arabia have heightened the acrimony between Saudi Arabia and Iran.