Mr. Robin Yassin-Kassab:

The Geneva I communiqué came to the conclusion that a transition should be negotiated. I absolutely believe that. That is the basis of any serious solution. There needs to be a transition and all the different voices, communities and perspectives in Syria and people who are scared of different people need to be involved in that. I am not talking about political actors but every community has genuine concerns. For example, in the case of the Alawis who are loyal to the regime, a small minority of them are loyal because they are paid up believers, but most of them are loyal because they are scared the Sunni majority will have a revenge on them in general, a generalised revenge. They are scared of groups like the Islamic State and of Jabhat al-Nusra for good reason. These people need to have guarantees that their community will not be attacked so that they feel safe to go forward with a transition. There needs to be a transitional government, a movement towards some kind of power-sharing or eventually elections in which people choose what will come next. Assad is in power, the Russians and the Iranians have kept him in power and I wish I could say and here is a new proposal: why does Assad not stay in power but give people X, Y and Z? I am afraid I cannot give the members a nice happy answer. As somebody of Syrian origin who has family members and many friends there and who is attached to the place, I wish I could but I cannot see any happy end to this. My analysis of the situation is that this is not going to end and it will continue for a very long time. It may well be that now that the revolution has been kicked out of the cities it really will become Jihadist insurgency almost entirely that will hurt us here too.

With respect to the sectarianism in the Middle East, I think we have not seen anything yet. We have now got a chain of wars with sectarian aspects to them in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, although it is quiet, and it is spreading all over the place. The change in the power balance between Iran and other countries in the region is affecting this. I am afraid I cannot give the Chairman a happy answer. I would love to be able to but I cannot. I have said what I believe should be part of the solution, namely, decentralisation, a bigger role for local government, local ceasefires and a United Nations-led negotiation aiming for a transition but without something changing the military or economic balance against Assad and primarily Russia and Iran we are not going to get there.

It seems to me that Russia and Iran are happy with a kind of permanent managed war in the Middle East, but it is not good for us. It is not good for the Middle East, it is not good for Europe and it is not good for the world.

I disagree with Deputy Barrett's comments on Assad. The Deputy is correct in saying Assad has some Syrian support. He has support for a range of reasons, whether fear or love. However, he does not have enough support to get people to fight for him. As I said, 80% of the ground troops surrounding Aleppo are not Syrian. I ask the committee to consider that. The most effective fighting groups in the Syrian army now are groups such as the Desert Hawks, for example, which is loyal to a man called Suheil al-Hassan, who is a warlord from the Hama area. His fighting men are loyal to him, not to Bashar al-Assad or to the Syrian state. Yes, there are people who still want to stick with Assad, but supposedly loyal people are trying to leave the country rather than fight for him. He cannot find fighting men any more. Two months or two and a half months ago, when the rebels briefly broke the siege on Aleppo, if the committee remembers that - I have forgotten what I was going to say. Sorry.