DAVOS (Sputnik), Daria Chernyshova — Finding a solution to the Syrian crisis is directly linked to the fight against terrorism, Iran's Presidential Chief of Staff Mohammad Nahavandian told Sputnik on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos on Friday.
"Solving the Syrian problem goes hand in hand with fighting terrorism. Without a unified fight against terrorism, there will be no solution for Syria."
Nahavandian added that the peace process's foreign mediators now understood this, which he welcomed as a positive development, especially ahead of the intra-Syrian talks later in January.
The universal recognition of the fact that the Syrian crisis cannot be solved through military action also encourages optimism about settling the conflict, the chief of staff said.
"It has to have a political solution. There should be a Syrian solution to that. The outside world has to help Syrian people to solve this problem, and no part of this solution can favor terrorism," he said.
Syria has been mired in a civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting a number of opposition factions and extremist groups.
In December, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on Syrian settlement, which reaffirmed the goals of the Vienna agreements to bring the entire spectrum of political groups active in the crisis-torn country to the negotiating table and stated that the next round of talks would take place in January, 2016.
