Today another round of negotiations on Syria will open in Vienna at the level of Foreign Ministers. “The U.S. is ready to work with any country, including Russia and Iran, to resolve the conflict in Syria,” the Deputy Press Secretary of the White House Erik Schultz said. “Inviting Iran to Vienna doesn’t mean that the U.S. stops paying attention to such steps by Tehran as 'support for the Bashar Assad regime and continuing support for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah',” ITAR-TASS cites Schultz.
Meanwhile, Sergey Gavrilov, a State Duma member who has recently returned from Syria, thinks that it is time to think about restoration of the Syrian economy. “I and my colleagues, Dmitry Sablin and Alexander Yushchenko, discussed specific issues related to the restoration of the Syrian economy with Prime Minister Wael Al-Halqi and members of the government. Let me remind you, the economy of Syria has almost halved – to 56 billion in GDP, 40% unemployment, 400% inflation. This is the influence of foreign terrorist aggression. At the same time, the main economic sectors in Syria continue to be under the control of the government, there is a highly qualified population, the desire of many refugees, and we were convinced of this in Lebanon, to return to their homeland, especially of citizens.”
Gavrilov says that Syria is ready “to discuss concrete and practical issues, a clear priority is exclusively for Russian companies, the need for coordination. We assume that we should establish a working body in the framework of the intergovernmental commission, which must identify the main priority issues of economic recovery, primarily oil, gas production and processing, production and processing of phosphates, energy, transportation, and processing of agriculture, and perhaps, the increase of export potential in this direction.”
According to the MP’s data, a number of large Russian companies and state corporations show an obvious interest in these issues. “We believe that a certain institutional approach must be established on the basis of this working group. Perhaps I would suggest some analogue of Lenstroy in order to accumulate the resources, to accumulate the monitoring by Russia, first of all, of the restoration works. There must be a regime of various projects. As part of the concessions, project financing, long-term fundraising, issuing of bond loans. And I hope that the number of those wishing to participate in the reconstruction of the economy of Syria is much greater than the number of those who participate in combat actions,” Gavrilov said.
