Foreign minister: Assad will remain president until 2014

Syria’s foreign minister laid out a hard line Wednesday, insisting that Bashar Assad will remain Syria’s president at least until elections in 2014 and might run for another term, conditions that will make it difficult for Syria’s opposition to agree to U. N.- sponsored talks on ending Syria’s civil war.

Any deal reached in such talks would have to be put to a referendum, Walid al- Moallem said in a TV interview, introducing a new condition that could complicate efforts by the U. S. and Russia to bring the two sides together at an international conference in Geneva, possibly next month.

The wide- ranging comments by alMoallem, , a regime stalwart with decades in top positions, reflected a new confidence by Assad’s government, which had seemed near collapse during a rebel offensive last summer but has scored a number of battlefield successes in recent weeks.

“Our armed forces have regained the momentum,” the foreign minister said.