Amid new international efforts to try to halt fighting in Syria, the country’s president has hit out at foreign nations hostile to his regime.<br /><br /> Bashar al-Assad has singled out Turkey, accusing it of supporting insurgents who have recently made further gains in a civil war now into its fourth year.<br /><br /> The Syrian President admitted to the Swedish newspaper Expressen that “war weakens any army, no matter how strong, no matter how modern”. <br /><br /> Ankara denies the claims made by Assad.<br /><br /> Next month the UN envoy for Syria will start consultations with representatives from Syria and other interested states on possible peace talks.<br /><br /> But Assad has a grim message for Steffan de Mastura, insisting that the conflict is complicated by what he calls “external intervention”. <br /><br /> He said that Mastura was aware that if he couldn’t “convince those countries to stop supporting the terrorists and let the Syrians solve the problem, he will not succeed”.<br /><br /> Assad also described Syria as a fault line, saying th
