Assad: Intelligence services maintain contacts with French counterpart

Syrian regime President Bashar al-Assad has told French television that his intelligence services maintain contacts with their French counterparts, media outlets reported.

He said that the contacts are active despite the fact that France has severed diplomatic ties with Al-Assad and insists he must leave power.

When asked if there was any exchange of information, Al-Assad said: “No.”

Al-Assad said that the contacts had been with French intelligence services who had visited Syria. “Meanwhile, we did not go to France,” he said. “They could have come to exchange information, but when you want this, you need to have good-will between both sides.”

No details have been given byAl- Assad about when the French officials visited Syria.

At the end of 2013, a number of EU diplomats said several ambassadors and intelligence staff would return to Damascus to contact the Syrian officials.

AFP said then that French intelligence officials had visited Damascus and met the chief of the Syrian intelligence and discussed whether there was room for the resumption of intelligence cooperation.

The Syrian official voiced his regime’s agreement on the condition that the French ambassador is reinstated.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in March that Paris wanted a political solution to the crisis in Syria but that Al-Assad was not part of it.