Russia says Syria's Assad is popular, likely to win new vote
Russia described Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as
a popular leader who has every chance to win re-election, Bloomberg reported.
“He’s fairly popular, if he wasn’t, the results of
the last few years would have been different,” President Vladimir Putin’s envoy
to the Middle East, Mikhail Bogdanov, said in an interview in Moscow this week.
“Of course, I think so,” he added, when asked
whether the Syrian leader can triumph in the next presidential vote.
Work is scheduled to start early next year on a new
constitution for Syria ahead of UN-supervised elections.
Assad won a presidential term in 2014 that will end
in 2021. After almost seven years of civil war, the Syrian government is
stepping up control of the country, with the planned withdrawal of US forces
expected to hand back a key oil-rich region to the central authorities.
