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		</div><p>Syrian President Bashar Assad has hit out at his French counterpart, accusing Francois Hollande of sponsoring terror in Syria.</p>
<p>He also encouraged Western nations to reset their relations with his pariah government, after six years of civil war.</p>
<p>The comments, which came in an interview with French media outlets Europe 1 and TF1, were the latest in a string of Assad&#8217;s public remarks aimed at revamping his image in the West in the wake of military victories on the ground in Syria.</p>
<figure id="attachment_98054" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-98054" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FrancoisHollande2Jan2014_large.jpg"><img src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FrancoisHollande2Jan2014_large.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="325" class="size-full wp-image-98054" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-98054" class="wp-caption-text">French President Francois Hollande</figcaption></figure>
<p>In the interview, Assad said the French president&#8217;s policy is tantamount to &#8220;supporting terrorists&#8221; in Syria, adding that he would prefer someone who is &#8220;not a warmonger&#8221; to be the next French president.</p>
<p>Assad&#8217;s government has labelled all armed opposition to his rule &#8211; including the Western-backed rebels &#8211; as &#8220;terrorists&#8221;.</p>
<p>French voters are going to the polls to elect a new president on April 23.<br />
Outgoing Mr Hollande maintained former president Nikolas Sarkozy&#8217;s position to support Syria&#8217;s 2011 uprising against the Assad family rule.</p>
<p>The revolt descended into all-out civil war, sparked by the government&#8217;s brutal crackdown on demonstrations.</p>
<p>Mr Hollande pushed hard for an international intervention in 2013, after more than 1,000 people were killed in a sarin gas attack in a Damascus suburb.<br />
Several Western nations and human rights groups subsequently accused Assad&#8217;s government of carrying out the attack.</p>
<p>Mr Hollande argued that Assad&#8217;s unchecked brutality fostered terror in the region.<br />
France subsequently suffered from a number of attacks claimed by Islamic State (IS), including the horrific multi-pronged Paris attack in November 2015 that killed more than 100 people.</p>
<p>The intervention ultimately failed to materialise, with then US president Barack Obama securing a guarantee from Assad&#8217;s sponsor Russia that Damascus would give up its chemical weapons stockpiles.</p>
<p>In the interview, which aired on Thursday, Assad took particular issue with Mr Hollande&#8217;s ardour for a military intervention in Syria.</p>
<p>&#8220;Hollande himself said it was a mistake not to launch a war in 2013,&#8221; Assad said.<br />
The interview comes on the heels of Assad&#8217;s remarks last week, in which the Syrian president said he would welcome US troops on the ground in Syria, to join the battle against &#8220;terrorists&#8221; &#8211; as long as it is in co-operation with his government and respects his country&#8217;s sovereignty.</p>
<p>Syria&#8217;s six-year civil war has killed more than 300,000 people and displaced half the country&#8217;s population.<br />
The country is shattered and the chaos has enabled the rise of IS, which has managed to seize a substantial chunk of Syrian territory for its self-styled caliphate.</p>
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