'Very confident' Assad talks of new front with Israel

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad raised the prospect of opening a front against Israel on the Golan and said Russia is committed to supplying his regime with advanced missiles, in an interview broadcast today.
Washington said such a move by Moscow would only prolong the conflict between government forces and Assad's foes in Syria, where activists say more than 94,000 people have been killed since March 2011.
"There is clear popular pressure to open a new front of resistance in the Golan," Assad told Al-Manar television of his close ally, Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah which is fighting alongside his forces.
"There are several factors, including repeated Israeli aggression," he said, referring to reported Israeli air strikes on Syria.

"We have informed all the parties who have contacted us that we will respond to any Israeli aggression next time," he said.
There was no immediate comment on Assad's remarks from Israel, which seized the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, since when the armistice line has remained calm despite some spillover from the Syrian conflict.

Assad, whose forces are battling alongside Hezbollah fighters to recapture the key town of Qusayr near the border with Lebanon, said he was "very confident" of victory.
"There is a world war being waged against Syria and the policy of (anti-Israeli) resistance... (but) we are very confident of victory," he said in the interview.

Earlier, Syrian state television said the Arjun district in northern Qusayr, one of the few remaining rebel strongpoints, had been taken, leaving rebels there little chance to escape.
Assad, who belongs to the Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam, appeared to imply in the interview that Russia has already delivered some of the promised ground-to-air S-300s.
"All the agreements with Russia will be honoured and some already have been recently," he said.
Moscow, the Assad regime's most powerful ally, has yet to confirm if it has already sent S-300s to Syria, but it announced this week it intends to honour its contract.

US National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden declined to comment on Assad's suggestion that S-300s have been delivered. But she said: "Our concerns about Russia's continued support for the Syrian regime through the provision of arms and access to Russian banks are well known."
"Providing additional weapons to Assad -- including air defence systems -- will only prolong the violence in Syria and incite regional destabilisation," she added.
On the diplomatic front, the United Nations said a preparatory meeting for a proposed international conference on the Syrian conflict will take place in Geneva next week.
"We can confirm that on 5 June, 2013 in Geneva, US, Russian and UN officials will hold a three-way meeting to further the preparations for the international conference on Syria envisioned under the US-Russian initiative," it said in a statement.

Syria's opposition National Coalition, meeting in Istanbul, earlier said it would not take part in the peace initiative dubbed Geneva 2 "so long as the militias of Iran and Hezbollah keep up their invasion".