CAIRO/AMMAN (REUTERS) - Syria's top diplomat and long-time foreign minister Walid al-Moalem, a staunch defender of Syrian President Bashar al Assad's bloody crackdown on peaceful protesters that sparked a decade old conflict, has died on Monday (Nov 16), the government said.
There were no details on the cause of death, but the 79-year old had for years been in poor health with heart problems.
A source close to the Syrian government said it was widely expected his deputy, veteran diplomat Faisal Mekdad, would replace his as foreign minister.
Moalem, who was first appointed foreign minister in 2006 and also held the post of deputy prime minister, held a succession of top diplomatic posts, including envoy to the United States and was involved in unsuccessful negotiations with Israel in the 1990's on a peace settlement.
"He was known for his honourable patriotic positions," the government said in a statement, adding he died at dawn and would be buried later on Monday in Damascus.
The veteran diplomat saw his country's tilt further towards Iran and Russia, which have helped shore up Assad's rule and allowed the authoritarian leader to regain most of the territory he once lost to insurgents.
Moalem, who was born in 1941 to a Sunni family in Damascus, publicly defended Moscow and Shi'ite Iran's growing military role, backed by its proxies in Syria, which many Syrian opponents of Assad labelled as an occupation and blamed for fuelling sectarian tension in a majority Sunni country.
"I am ready to be one of Hassan Nasrallah's soldiers," Moalem said in August 2006, referring to the leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hizbollah, which has in recent years sent thousands of its members to fight alongside Assad's forces.
Assad's opponents branded him a traitor for supporting the violent crackdown on protesters at the beginning of the conflict in 2011 when thousands took to the streets calling for an end to the Assad family's decades old authoritarian rule that later erupted into a full-scale civil war.
"No government in the world can accept an armed terrorist group, some of them coming from abroad, controlling streets and villages in the name of 'jihad'," Moalem said in a 2012 newspaper interview.
Assad is drawn from the minority Alawite sect whose members control the security forces and army that spearheaded the crackdown that human rights groups and the United Nations said caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Moalem accused United States and others in the West of fuelling his country's unrest and labelled insurgents "jihadi terrorists" in a conflict in which more than half a million people have been killed and more than 5.6 million have become refugees, most of them Sunnis.
The veteran diplomat recently attacked the Caesar Act - the toughest US sanctions yet against Damascus - which came into force last June, saying they were meant to starve Syrians. He vowed that his country would get economic help from Iran and Russia to soften its blow.
Washington says the goal of the new sanctions is to hold Damascus to account for war crimes and deter it from further pursuing the war. The sanctions exempt humanitarian aid.
