'Fighting extremism' top priority: Assad

Syria's future will be decided only after "getting rid of extremists" and achieving political reconciliation, the country's President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published Monday. As the war that has ravaged his country approaches its seventh year, Assad told reporters it was "still early to talk about" his vision for Syria's future.
"It's a luxury now to talk about politics while you're going to be killed maybe in a few minutes, you have terrorist attacks," he told a group of Western journalists, state news agency SANA said. "So this is the priority, getting rid of the extremists, the political reconciliation in the different areas, this is another priority," he added. "When you achieve these two, you can talk about every discussion you want to regarding any issue." SANA did not specify which outlets the Western journalists were from.