Assad says hopes Russia can change Turkey's policy towards Syria

[October 13, 2016]    MOSCOW (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday that his country's only hope was that a rapprochement between Russia and Turkey would allow Moscow to change Ankara's policy towards Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, in this October 20, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin/ Files

Assad made the comments in an interview with Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, a fragment of which was published on the paper's site on Thursday. The full interview is due to be published on Friday.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova and Christian Lowe; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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