Gaza war risks sowing 'seeds of extremism': Syrian President

LONDON (AFP) - Israel's military offensive on the Gaza Strip risks "sowing seeds of extremism and terror around the region", Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the BBC on Wednesday.
"The effect of war is more dangerous than war... This is like sowing the seeds of extremism around the region, in the Arab and Muslim worlds," he told the British broadcaster in an interview conducted in Damascus.
"Desperation breeds extremism. Extremism will produce terrorism," he added, calling the standoff "a political crisis combined with a humanitarian crisis. You have to solve them, otherwise you will sow the seeds of extremism."
He said that his country was doing everything it could to help bring about a truce, adding that Islamist movement Hamas had agreed on the need for a "sustainable ceasefire,"
"We have been working with many countries, primarily the French," he said, adding that the Israelis had to respect a ceasefire for Hamas to stop firing rockets into southern Israel.
Assad said Hamas had to be party to any wider peace deal between the Palestinians and Syria's neighbour Israel.
"They are influential. That is most important. So they have to be brought to any action, otherwise it will not succeed," he said in an interview with BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen.
But he lamented: "We haven't achieved peace yet and the Israelis never delivered since the beginning of the peace process in 1991... So when you don't accept the peace terms, you have to expect resistance."