There are individual interests of certain groups that want to have independence or autonomy. Some of those parties, they want to find justification for their interests, so they use their denomination or their faith as an umbrella.

They talk about an existential threat for their denomination or faith.

In Syria, we have been living in coexistence with different groups, different religious groups, for 1,400 years. We’re still existing, and we still have that diversity.

We were in a war with [the Islamic State] for 10 years, and we did that without coordination with a Western force or any other country.

Syria today is capable of shouldering this responsibility. Keeping Syria divided, or having any military force that is not under control of the government, represents the best environment for ISIS to flourish.

I believe the best solution is that the U.S. troops present in Syria should supervise the integration [of the SDF into the central government’s security forces]. The task of protecting Syrian territory will be the responsibility of the state.

Syria got into war with Israel 50 years ago. Then, in 1974, there was a disengagement agreement.

This agreement lasted for 50 years. But when the [Assad] regime fell, Israel revoked this agreement.

They expanded their presence in Syria, expelled the U.N. [peacekeeping] mission and occupied new territory.

Israel has conducted over 1,000 airstrikes in Syria since Dec. 8, and that included bombing the Presidential Palace and the Ministry of Defense. But because we want to rebuild Syria, we didn’t respond to these aggressions.

The advances that Israel made into Syria are not coming from [their] security concerns but are coming from their expansionist ambitions.

Israel has always claimed that it has concerns about Syria because it is afraid of the threats that the Iranian militias and [Lebanon’s] Hezbollah represent.

We are the ones who expelled those forces out of Syria.

We are engaged in direct negotiations with Israel, and we have gone a good distance on the way to reach an agreement.

But to reach a final agreement, Israel should withdraw to their pre-Dec. 8 borders.

The United States is with us in these negotiations, and so many international parties support our perspective in this regard.

Today, we found that Mr. Trump supports our perspective as well, and he will push as quickly as possible in order to reach a solution for this.

To talk about an entire region demilitarized, it will be difficult, because if there is any kind of chaos, who will protect it? If this demilitarized zone was used by some parties as a launching pad for hitting Israel, who is going to be responsible for that?

And at the end of the day, this is Syrian territory, and Syria should have the freedom of dealing with their own territory.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights in order to protect Israel, and now they are imposing conditions in the south of Syria in order to protect the Golan Heights.

So after a few years, maybe they will occupy the center of Syria in order to protect the south of Syria.

They will reach Munich on that pathway.

We were in war against Russia for 10 years, and it was a hard, difficult war. They announced that they killed me several times.

We need Russia because it’s a permanent member of the [U.N.] Security Council. We need their vote to be on our side in some issues, and we have strategic interests with them.

We don’t want to push Russia to take alternative or other options in dealing with Syria.

The issue of Bashar al-Assad is troublesome for Russia, and our relationship with them — we’re still in the beginning.

We will preserve our rights as Syrians to call for bringing Assad to justice.