Syria warns Saudi army against incursion

“I regret to say that they will return home in wooden coffins”.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem warned Saudi Arabia not to send troops to his country, threatening, during a press conference Saturday, that troops would be sent back home in coffins.

“Any ground intervention on Syrian territory without government authorisation would amount to an aggression that must be resisted”, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said at a news conference in Damascus.

He says that the Saudi Kingdom is prepared to participate in any ground operation in Syria that is agreed upon by the (U.S.-led) anti-Islamic State coalition.

“This is a problem for Saudi and Qatar as they have massively invested into Syria via the moderate opposition as their surrogate on the ground”, said Krieg, who also serves as a consultant to the Qatari armed forces.

The delegation of the opposition from inside Syria should be represented because they are national opposition who have stayed in Syria all through the past period…No one in the opposition can claim to be the only representative of the whole opposition, al-Moallem said.

Thousands of residents are housed in informal camps near Turkey’s borders with Syria after pro-government troops, backed by Russian Federation, targeted rebels near Aleppo this week.

He said the opposition backers wanted to strike the political process because they were counting on advancing on ground.

The opposition has accused the government of acting in bad faith by launching the Aleppo offensive in parallel to the start of the talks.

Saudi Defense Ministry spokesman General Ahmed al-Assiri told Arab media Friday that his country was ready to send ground forces to fight in Syria.

Ahead of the meeting in Geneva, the opposition demanded bringing the Syrian army operations against rebel-held areas to a halt, adopting the communique of the 2012 Geneva meeting, which calls for a political transition in Syria, and basing the upcoming negotiations on the 2013 United Nations resolution no. 2118, which calls for forming a transitional governing body exercising full executive powers, which could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.

Al-Moallem said the Syrian government was ready to have dialogue with Syrians, but without preconditions.