Fall of regime will cause regional instability

Bashar al-Assad

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned that the fall of his regime would destabilise the region "for many years", as US President Barack Obama announced talks with Middle East allies over the crisis.
"The whole world knows that if Syria is partitioned, or if terrorist forces take control of the country, there will be direct contagion of the surrounding countries," Assad said in an interview with two Turkish media outlets, video of which was posted on his Facebook page Friday.
"Then there would be a domino effect on countries perhaps far from the Middle East, to the west, east, north and south. This would mean instability for many years, even decades."
With ongoing battles between rebels and regime forces and a deepening humanitarian crisis, the White House announced Friday that Obama would host regional leaders from Jordan, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the coming weeks to discuss the situation, now in its third year.
The US administration said Obama would meet with Jordan's King Abdullah II on April 26, and with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on May 16.
Turkey and Jordan have strongly backed the two-year-old revolt against Assad, and both countries host large numbers of Syrian refugees.
Assad slammed the Turkish premier in the interview, conducted earlier this week, accusing Ankara of "contributing directly to the killing of the Syrian people".
In extracts published on Wednesday, Assad accused Erdogan of not having said "a single word of truth since the beginning of the crisis in Syria".