Transcript: Syrian president Bashar Assad

BASHAR ASSAD: But I’m going to build on this stability.  (UNINTEL) economic situation.  The growth, the economic growth.  When I became president, the—the growth was—the economy growth was about zero.  In 200-- in 2005, it was 4.5 according to the (UNINTEL).  They expect last year to be 5.1.  That’s what I want.  More openings.  More—

CURRY: You want prosperity—

BASHAR ASSAD: Exactly.

CURRY: --for your people.

BASHAR ASSAD: For Syria, to talk about the social and culture aspect, which is very important—we need more openings with the—with the rest of the world to have more creativity, more entrepreneurship.  We cannot without openings.  That’s what I want.

This is a—I mean, if you want to say what—how do the people remember me in detail (UNINTEL) general terms.  But in detail this is my first (UNINTEL).  And, of course, we are working on the—the political reform which is important, again.  But which is slower because of our reality and because of our culture and the history.

But we are moving forward.  Now we have private media.  We have private universities.  We are discussing—in modern-- (UNINTEL) of law for—for another—for parties, for political parties.  And—changing the law-- (UNINTEL) parliament.  Things like this.  But, of course, we are moving step by step.

CURRY: So it’s not just prosperity.  You—you want—your father brought stability.

BASHAR ASSAD: Exactly.

CURRY: It’s like you want to make Syria a modern nation.

BASHAR ASSAD: Exactly.

CURRY: A modern nation, meaning one that has free press—

BASHAR ASSAD: Exactly.

CURRY: --free expression and open political system?

BASHAR ASSAD: Yes.  That’s—

CURRY: You want an open political system in Syria?

BASHAR ASSAD: Yeah, yeah.  Yeah, but this is the goal.

CURRY:      That’s the goal.

BASHAR ASSAD: This is from the wait.

CURRY: From the way it is currently.

BASHAR ASSAD: Yeah.  It could be long wait—

CURRY: How long is it gonna take, Mr. President?

BASHAR ASSAD: As long as the obstacles that we have.

CURRY: The obstacles that—that—

BASHAR ASSAD: I don’t know if it’s (UNINTEL) long ago (UNINTEL).  Yes.

CURRY: As long as it takes—

BASHAR ASSAD: As long as it takes for—

CURRY: And what is the greatest obstacle to this dream of reform for Syria?

BASHAR ASSAD: It’s in the mind of the people.  We have very good people, very national people.  But—we have lots of—we have organizations, customs, and—habits that you have to change.  (UNINTEL) we always have (UNINTEL PHRASE) one of the issue that we have to tackle.

The second, the tension in the region, the political tension, the sectarian tension—has effect in our country like any other country.  You cannot talk about political opening while the minds or some minds are getting closer, when you have (UNINTEL) means they have more closed minds in—in your society.  And closed minds is—is the opposite of opening the system or opening the mind.

CURRY: You’re talking about fundamentalism?

BASHAR ASSAD:       Yes.  Yes.

CURRY: So you’re saying it’s very difficult to open up a country—

BASHAR ASSAD: But it’s not—

CURRY: --and political freedoms if there’s an increase of fundamentalism in your country—

BASHAR ASSAD: Yes.

CURRY: --because those are diametrically opposed.

BASHAR ASSAD: Yes.  But it’s not the precise word—word (UNINTEL).  I prefer to use extremism.

CURRY: Extremism.

BASHAR ASSAD: Yes.  Fundamentalism (UNINTEL).  The fund—the fundament—

CURRY: I see. You’re saying—you’re—

BASHAR ASSAD: --could be—could—

CURRY: You’re saying you want political reform, and the only thing that’s stopped you is because of the rise of extremism in your country.

BASHAR ASSAD: This is one aspect.

CURRY: One aspect.

BASHAR ASSAD: But poverty, poverty is another aspect.  You cannot talk about political reform without economic reform.  That’s priority.  And the people at the end would ask you, “But I want to eat food.  I’m not going to (UNINTEL).”  So—

CURRY: So are you happy with what you’ve achieved so far, given the circumstances?

BASHAR ASSAD: According to our circumstances, what we achieved is less than our ambition but better than our—above our expectation.  I didn’t expect, for example, 2005, which is one of the bad years politically, to be good year economically, where we had this embargo from many countries in the world and we still have.

But we could do our (UNINTEL PHRASE) seven percent—the minimum of growth to have the (UNINTEL) need seven percent.  But could I achieve that in these circumstances?  You don’t—you don’t have (UNINTEL) investing.  You don’t have peace.  And you have the problem of Iraq and you have the terrorism.  In spite of that (UNINTEL), it’s good.

CURRY: And what is your ambition for political reforms with Syria?

BASHAR ASSAD: As I say, to have the modern political system.  But, of course, we’re not going to see—

CURRY: Democracy?

BASHAR ASSAD: Yeah, democracy is a tool for prosperity.

CURRY: Is that what you mean by a modern political—is that what you mean?

BASHAR ASSAD: Yeah, democracy, but our demo—

CURRY: Open elections?

BASHAR ASSAD: Our democracy.  Not the Western democracy.  Of course elections.  But, again, everything should be based all those criteria should be based on our habits and custom and traditions and history and culture.

CURRY: So are you saying that if you are successful, then your son will not have to be president?

BASHAR ASSAD: My son?

CURRY: Yes.

BASHAR ASSAD: The Syrian citizen.  He has the right like any other citizen. (LAUGHTER)

CURRY: But you had no choice.  You had no choice.

BASHAR ASSAD:       No, I had a choice.

CURRY: Well—

BASHAR ASSAD: I have the choice when—when my father died, I wasn’t any—in any high position.  I was only in the army in a very low rank.  And I even became vice-president or a high member in the—party when he died.  He could have done that.  And many people pushed him to do—to do that for me.

And he always refused.  He said (UNINTEL) became—we have institution—institution (UNINTEL) institution will decide.  (UNINTEL) the decision from the institution.  And I became president through the institution.  But—I—I couldn’t—he couldn’t made me president no matter how strong he was ‘cause this is the (UNINTEL).

But, of course—if you said it was helpful that it was, you know, it was my father, of course it was helpful at least for my reputation.  Because people hadn’t tried me as politician before.  But they only knew about my reputation as a member of the family.

CURRY: And very young, too.  You were 34 years old.  You were very young. Do you ever still wish you were an ophthalmologist?

Do you ever still wish some day, ‘cause I notice that you try so hard to have a normal life with your wife and your children.

BASHAR ASSAD:       Yeah.  I keep trying.

CURRY:      And she seems so lovely and it just seems, I wonder, sometimes is it gone, this wish to have been an eye doctor?  Do you still wish for the quiet life, taking care of people’s eye surgery—

BASHAR ASSAD: Yes.

CURRY: --or are you waiting to be—

BASHAR ASSAD: No.  Of course (UNINTEL) look at the past.  But I still have matter issue of my colleagues when I was a doctor.  And—always curious to know what’s new because now there’s—full generation between—the (UNINTEL)-- I mean, the new technology in my field in that—in my previous field and-- (LAUGHTER) those things.

So—I still have link and passion and (UNINTEL).  But anyway, at that time, I never thought about having my private clinic.  I always thought about working the public sector as a doctor.  And I worked in the public sector and I (UNINTEL) public sector before leaving to—to London.  So I moved from public sector to wider public sector, which is president (UNINTEL) everything now.

You ask me about the normal.  Of course, I have tried very hard to live as much normal life as I can.  And I go to restaurants.  I meet with normal people.  I have a (UNINTEL)-- I have my private life (UNINTEL).  But it’s only aspect if you miss forever that you go and walk in the street without anybody recognizing.

CURRY: It’s not possible.

BASHAR ASSAD: Yeah.

CURRY: But you do drive your own car.

BASHAR ASSAD: Yes, of course.

CURRY: And I heard that you drove Nancy Pelosi around pretty fast.

BASHAR ASSAD: Yeah. You can ask her about it. 

CURRY: And I heard that you were shocked actually.  You ended up in a restaurant (UNINTEL).

BASHAR ASSAD: Yes, yes.

CURRY: Do you like that?  Do you like—do you like—do you like to make them struggle to find you?  Are you mischievous that way?

BASHAR ASSAD: No, we don’t have that problem. Of course Syria is (UNINTEL) in general.  It—it (UNINTEL).  I mean—if you don’t have good relation with the people, nobody would protect you no matter how many guards you had.  You need more than one million.  So the best thing to have good security for president security is to have good relation and the trust with the people.

CURRY: I guess on that note, I wanna ask you one last thing before we do our walk.  You obviously have a tremendous upbringing.  You’re very well educated obviously.  And you are humble.  There’s a part of you that’s actually very humble for a president.  And yet you were having this difficulty with having a relationship with the US government.

So let me ask you this.  If you could make your relationship with the American people, to the American people listening now, what do you want them to know of you and why they should trust Syria?

BASHAR ASSAD: I think, first of all, they—they have to know that we have people like the American people.  They want to live their lives.  They’re looking for better standards.  They’re looking for (UNINTEL).

They like to have dialogue.  Because I know about the American people that they are—very friendly with the foreigners.  We have the same—thing.  Some talking about the United States as (UNINTEL).  You have many ethnicities and (UNINTEL).  We have that for thousands of—years.

We have many things in common.  So they have to trust me that they have to look.  They have to trust me or trust anybody else.  They have to look for the information and to analyze it in the right way.  We wouldn’t ask them to trust just for trust.  That we (UNINTEL) know this is not the issue.  The issue whether they have the right information or not.  You have the (UNINTEL), the best advanced—the most advanced (UNINTEL) in the world, the internet, the satellites in the world and so on.

You have to use it to bring information from afar, not to export information.  So export the information, we know a lot about the United States.  But we need the United States to know more about our culture and our region.  This is a second—one thing to know that the United States is—not in—an important power.  It’s a great power.

But it—an important power means you can do whatever you want without the rest of the world.  No.  You cannot.  You need the help of the smallest countries and the poorest countries in the world.  (UNINTEL) as—great power and China.  You’ve got—but I’m talking about the small and poor countries.  Every country, when it has (UNINTEL) and can help you in fighting terrorism and having better situation.  And (UNINTEL) the reputation and the future of—of the American politics, not the people.  The American people have-- (UNINTEL) reputation.

Again, the—the third thing, which is very important, after 11^th of September, I would ask the American people to learn more about what’s behind the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.  It’s not enough to say that we live in America.  We live in New World.  And after 11^th of September, you have to ask the—

CURRY:  Why did that happen?  We have to take care about the rest of the world in a positive way. You have important responsibility towards the rest of the world in prosperity.  You have to develop the rest of the world.  You have to solve the problem of the rest of the world.  When you are a great power, means a great—responsibility.  When you are a great power, means a great—achievement and the great technology and the great economy and the great laws.  It’s not only great army.  That’s how that’s what I would say.

CURRY: When you say ask the question “Why did it happen?” why did it happen, Mr. President?

BASHAR ASSAD: It’s a cultural conflict.  It’s a state of mind.  Terrorism is a state of mind.  It’s not a person.  It’s not organization.  The question “Why?” because how to (UNINTEL) it.  If we think of them as personal organization, we’re going to send the troops and prove them to be wrong and counterproductive actually.

When we know the answer about why that it’s a state of mind, we know how to deal (UNINTEL) politically, first; economically, second; culturally and by improving the education, for example, in (UNINTEL).  That’s (UNINTEL) quite know how to cope with it.

BASHAR ASSAD: The fourth (UNINTEL) we (UNINTEL) poor countries.  We what’s preventing the (UNINTEL) as a great country from (UNINTEL).  It’s a matter of knowledge.

CURRY: So it’s understanding why people are upset with you and doing what you can to make them not angry.

BASHAR ASSAD:       Exactly.  Exactly.

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