President al-Assad: War on terrorism will only end

President Bashar al-Assad said that the war on terrorism will only end when the last terrorist in Syria is eliminated, affirming that significant strides have been made in the war on terror by eliminating the main hotbeds of Daesh (ISIS).

In a statement to journalists on Monday after a meeting with a Russian official and economic delegation headed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, President al-Assad said that Syrian-Russian relations date back to more than six decades, and they had always emphasized the political aspect, but in the current circumstances of war emphasis focused more on the political and military aspects, which means that economic relations did not receive the due attention during past decades.

He said that during the previous visit by Rogozin, a number of priorities for improving economic relations have been set, and in the time between these two visits there have been achievements on the ground as a number of Russian companies started work on a number of projects, just as the security situation improved and the Syrian economy started to move forward.

“This visit is an opportunity to promote existing projects and the sectors in which we started work, and at the same time expanding towards new sectors that we had not set as priorities two years ago. So, the delegation today is large and diverse and covers various fields, and very important projects have been proposed for Russian investments in Syria, particularly since we started the reconstruction stage now. At the same time, we talked about heading east in our economic and cultural relations and other fields, and of course when we talking about heading east, Russia is one of the most important countries in it,” President al-Assad said.