Syria’s de facto leader says it could take up to 4 years to hold elections

BEIRUT —  Syria’s de facto leader said Sunday that it could take up to four years to hold elections in Syria, and that he plans to dissolve his Islamist group that led the country’s insurgency at an anticipated national dialogue summit for the country.

Ahmad al-Sharaa, who leads Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the group leading the new authority in Syria, made the remarks in an interview with Saudi television network Al Arabiya. It comes almost a month after a lightning insurgency led by the group, known as HTS, overthrew President Bashar Assad, ending the country’s uprising-turned-civil war that started in 2011.

Al-Sharaa said it would take time to hold elections because of the need for Syria’s different forces to hold political dialogue and rewrite the country’s constitution after five decades of the Assad dynasty’s dictatorial rule. Also, the war-torn country’s battered infrastructure needs to be reconstructed, he said.

“The chance we have today doesn’t come every five or 10 years,” said Al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani. “We want the constitution to last for the longest time possible.”

Al-Sharaa is de facto leader until March 1, when Syria’s different factions are set to hold a political dialogue to determine the country’s political future and establish a transitional government that unites the divided nation. There, he said, HTS will dissolve after years of being the most dominant Syrian rebel group and which held a strategic enclave in the country’s northwest.

Earlier, an Israeli airstrike Sunday on the outskirts of Damascus killed 11 people, according to a war monitor, as Israel continues to target Syrian weapons and military infrastructure even after the ouster of Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike targeted a weapons depot that belonged to Assad’s forces near the industrial town of Adra, northeast of the capital. The observatory said at least 11 people, mostly civilians, were killed. The Israeli military did not comment Sunday on the airstrike.

Israel, which has launched hundreds of airstrikes over Syria since the country’s uprising-turned-civil war broke out in 2011, rarely acknowledges them. It says its targets are Iran-backed groups allied with Assad.

In contrast to his criticism of key Assad ally Iran, Al-Sharaa said he hoped to maintain “strategic relations” with Russia, whose air force played a crucial role in keeping Assad in power for over a decade during the conflict. Moscow has a strategic air base in Syria.

Al-Sharaa also said that negotiations are ongoing with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, in northeastern Syria and that he hopes the group’s armed forces will integrate with the Syrian security agencies.

The Kurdish-led group is Washington’s key ally in Syria, where it is heavily involved in targeting sleeper cells belonging to the extremist group Islamic State.

Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have been clashing with the SDF even after the insurgency, taking the key city of Manbij, as Ankara hopes to create a buffer zone near the Turkish-Syrian border.

The rebels attacked near the strategic northern border town of Kobani, while the SDF shared a video of a rocket attack that destroyed what it said was a radar system south of the city of Manbij.

Chehayeb writes for the Associated Press.