Syria's de facto leader says it could take up to 4 years to hold elections

Syria's de facto leader said Sunday it could take up to four years to hold elections in Syria, and that he plans to dissolve his Islamist group that led the country's insurgency at an anticipated national dialogue summit for the country. Ahmad al-Sharaa, who leads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group leading the new authority in Syria, made the remarks in an interview with Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya. It comes almost a month after a lightning insurgency led by HTS overthrew President Bashar Assad's decades-long rule, ending the country's uprising-turned civil war that started back in 2011. Al-Sharaa said it would take time to hold elections because of the need for Syria's different forces to hold political dialogue and rewrite the country's constitution following five decades of the Assad dynasty's dictatorial rule. “Today we are re-establishing the state and not re-running the affairs of the state as they were in the past,” said al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani. Al-Sharaa is Syria's de facto leader until March 1, when Syria's different factions are set to hold a political dialogue to determine the country's political future and establish a transitional government that brings the divided country together. There, he said, HTS will dissolve after years of being the country's most dominant rebel group that held a strategic enclave inthe country's northwest. Unlike his criticism of key Assad ally Iran, al-Sharaa hoped to maintain “strategic relations” with Russia, whose air force played a critical role in keeping Assad in power for over a decade during the conflict. Moscow has a strategic airbase in Syria. The HTS leader also said negotiations are ongoing with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria and hopes that their armed forces will integrate with the Syrian security agencies. The Kurdish-led group is Washington’s key ally in Syria, where it is heavily involved in targeting sleeper cells belonging to the extremist Islamic State group.