WE’D been trying for two years to interview Syrian President Bashar al-Assad without any luck. It’s not easy for the media to reach the president of a country in a full-blown civil war whom Western powers and opponents have accused of war crimes.

Then, suddenly, on Tuesday, Jan 14, one of the president’s staff calls me at my bureau in Beirut. He asks me to come to Damascus the next day to meet up with the head of the president’s media and communication office. Obviously something is being prepared.

I speak to the communications director and she tells me Assad is going to grant a single interview ahead of the Geneva II peace talks, planned for the following week between regime figures and the opposition in exile.

We talk a little about the format of the interview and she says Assad prefers direct questions.

I stay in the Syrian capital until the meeting, scheduled for Sunday, Jan 19. Reporter Rana Moussaoui from the Beirut bureau and photographer Joseph Eid are to accompany me for the interview.

The day before, Rana and I organise our questions and put them in order of importance. The interview is supposed to last 20 minutes, but we plan in case we get any more time.

The night before the big day, we can hardly sleep. All three of us have frayed nerves thinking that, in just a few hours, we’ll be talking to one of the world’s most controversial men, the main actor in a crisis so grave that it has even stoked new tensions between erstwhile Cold War adversaries Russia and the US.

In the morning, a car from the presidency comes to pick us up at our hotel. We go to the presidential palace which is located on a hill that looms over Damascus.

As we go in we pass through a metal detector, but apart from that there are no real security measures immediately apparent in the huge complex.

We’re taken into a room with the minister of culture, Lubanah Mushaweh. She’s a professor of linguistics and speaks flawless French — it’s her task to translate my questions, while Rana will pose hers directly in Arabic.

As we wait for the president, we discuss archaeology and the protection of historic sites.

Finally, Assad makes his entrance. He comes to meet us and seems unassuming, a smile on his lips. He shakes our hands and we introduce ourselves. He asks me if, with a name like Sammy, I am Lebanese like Rana and Joseph.

Then he tells us politely: “Listen, ask me direct questions and I’ll answer in the same manner.”

Physically, the 48-year-old Assad shares little in common with some of the autocrats associated with the Middle East, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Moammar Qadhafi in Libya. Both had immediately rough features and looked somewhat brutal. Not so with Assad.

The former ophthalmology student who was thrust into power in 2000 after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad wears an elegant dark suit and a crisp blue tie and shirt.

He looks more like a senior manager, pleasant enough though perhaps a little frail.

Assad tells us that he gave other interviews when the US was threatening to launch air strikes against Syria because he was accused of crossing the “red line” of using chemical weapons against civilians. “Then I disappeared from the media for three months. It’s through you that I am returning to public view.”

Then we go to the library where the camera has been set up. The presidency initially wanted a text-only interview but the communications director eventually agreed to let us ask our first three questions on-camera, provided Assad was given the questions ahead of time and his people filmed the responses.

But other questions that we ask off-camera are not restricted at all. Assad answers all of them.

The interview goes on for 45 minutes despite the communications director’s feigned protests. At the end of the meeting, Assad says goodbye and heads into his office, where guests are waiting.

During the entire interview, the tone is polite but firm. Assad asked for direct questions, and that’s exactly what we gave him. We ask him about the behaviour of his army, the bombing of civilians. He replies without showing any trace of annoyance.

But his stance hasn’t shifted since the start of the crisis: the Syrian army hasn’t committed any crimes, the uprising was never a revolution, the instigators are foreign countries hostile to the Syrian regime, he says.

”This battle is not, as Western propaganda portrays a popular uprising against a regime suppressing its people and a revolution calling for democracy and freedom,” he says.

“A popular revolution doesn’t last for three years only to fail. Moreover, a national revolution cannot have a foreign agenda.”

Usually when Assad meets with journalists, palace photographers take all the pictures. But after lengthy discussions, the head of the press office lets our photographer Joseph Eid take 10 photos, of which only five can be published after they’ve been selected by the presidency.

This is exceptional. Following the interview, Assad’s office will also publish other photos, taken by an official photographer.

The palace records the interview and provides us a transcript in Arabic, English and French. We check it closely: nothing has been left out.—AFP Blog