In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor from his office in Damascus, Syria, Ali Haidar, Syria's minister of national reconciliation and leader of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, said that President Bashar Assad’s recent speech consisted of “preliminary ideas” about a transitional phase in Syria and should not be discounted.
“We personally think that this is the first time that the president has put forward a set of ideas which constitute a step forward toward solving the crisis,” Haidar said, adding that “the relationship between Assad's proposal, the Geneva Initiative and Lakhdar Brahimi's statement was a set of principles to resolve the crisis.”