In his strongest statement yet on the Syrian Crisis, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Bashar al-Assad’s regime will not fall and attempts to overthrow it by force will aggravate the crisis in the region

In his strongest statement yet on the Syrian Crisis, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Sunday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime will not fall and attempts to overthrow it by force will aggravate the crisis in the region.
  
“It has been one year and the regime did not fall, and it will not fall, and why should it fall?” Maliki said in a news conference in Baghdad. “We reject any arming (of Syrian militants) and the process to overthrow the regime, because this will leave a greater crisis in the region,” Maliki said concerning calls for arming the terrorist so-called opposition groups in Syria.
 
Without naming them, Maliki said “the stance of some Arab states is very strange. They are calling for sending arms instead of working on putting out the fire, and they will hear our voice, that we are against arming and against foreign interference." "We are against the interference of some countries in Syria's internal affairs, and those countries that are interfering in Syria's internal affairs will interfere in the internal affairs of any country," the Iraqi leader added.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are the main advocates for arming Syrian militants and have called for Assad's departure. The two Gulf states sent low-level delegations to a landmark Arab summit in Baghdad on Thursday, in what the Qatari premier said was a "message" to Iraq.