Some countries – Lebanon, Jordan, even Turkey – are keen for Syrian refugees to return home. What do you say to them?
Under current circumstances I don’t think there will be a lot of refugees who will want to return. There are opinion polls that say 58 per cent of the refugees might like to return if there was a safe environment in Syria − but not now.
The treatment of refugees is different from one country to another. We know that Lebanon is using militias, Hezbollah and others, to exert pressure and scare the refugees. Without international pressure, Lebanon would have forced all the refugees back and would have handed over many of them to the [Assad] regime. Of course, the economy is very bad in Lebanon now.
Do you think Bashar al-Assad wants the refugees to return?
