Spain says backs ‘peaceful’, ‘stable’ solution for Syria

MADRID: Spain will support a peaceful solution for Syria that provides stability for the region, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Sunday following the reported fall of the Assad regime.
Madrid wants “any solution for the future of Syria to be a peaceful one… that benefits the Syrian people and in some way brings new stability to the Middle East and not more instability”, Albares told Spanish public television.
“We have to take steps to ensure that it’s the Syrian people who decide how they are governed and by whom in future and, of course, that Syria’s territorial integrity is maintained,” he said.
The minister said he hoped there would not be a “Balkanisation” of Syria, “with different regions controlled by different groups”.
Islamist-led rebels said they had taken the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Sunday.
President Bashar al-Assad is reported to have fled the country, ending five decades of Baath party rule.
Albares said he did not have any information as to Assad’s whereabouts, although there were indications that he was no longer in the Syrian capital.
“Although we don’t have official confirmation of this, all the official sources I’ve spoken to, including information forwarded to me from our embassy, is that Assad appears to have fled Damascus already,” he said.
“I am also in contact with European colleagues and colleagues in the region. Everyone has been taken by surprise by the speed of events,” he continued.
Albares said the tiny Spanish community in Syria — nine Spanish nationals and around 100 people with dual Spanish-Syrian nationality — was “well” and located in various parts of the country where the situation was currently “calm”.