ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: David Cameron will set out his strategy for Syria this week with a report, MPs could vote for strikes within the country within about a fortnight and on Friday the United Nations Security Council urged its members to take all necessary measures to fight Islamic State.  Well I’m joined now by His Royal Highness, Prince Hassan of Jordan, one of the key players in the region of course, he is in Amman and a very good morning to you Prince Hassan and straight away to this issue of the US joining Jordan and others in air strikes in Syria.  Your country as I referred to there has been attacking IS at some cost to your country, would you like the UK to add its support.

PRINCE HASSAN: How wars end is very important to focus here.  The UK is already an ally, a proven ally of many crises in the region, not least of all this one.  The Turks we understand in the area referred to have been bombing recently, as have the Russians and the French, to create a safe haven if you will.  I don't know, I’m not up to speed but I think that the visit of John Kerry to the Gulf region – of course we have the greatest appreciation of what the Gulf has been doing in terms of promoting this anti-ISIS effort but we have to remind ourselves that the Gulf is twofold, on the one side Iran and on the other side the Arab Gulf States, so if the British support and the British strikes is going to lead to more division within Syria and within zones of influence then I think we will not have defined how wars end.  We believe that the future should be a federal pluralist future where everyone respects each other and this region does not continue to morcelize.

DM: But is the Jordanian view in the meantime, before that transition is completed, that President Assad and the Syrian army have a role to play now, that it should not be a precondition of the immediate way forward that Assad must go?

PRINCE HASSAN: I’m sorry you’re cutting out but I just wanted to say, if I understood your question, that Senator McCain yesterday was saying what about 10,000 soldiers on the ground, this is not an invincible enemy.  I think the question is to go back to 2008 when the Director of the CIA, Bill Haden, said we have destroyed or made strategic advances in destroying Al-Qaeda in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia and indeed the impressive security arrangements in Saudi Arabia have contained this threat but what is the difference today? Are we going to contain this threat ideologically?  If it’s a war of the west against terror and in particular Islamic State so-called, the west seems to be particularly European.  What preparation after Paris do they have for the consequences of all this?

DM: Well can you answer your own question, Prince Hassan, and of course we’ve got to throw into the mix, if we include …

PRINCE HASSAN: Well if I may, yes.

DM: Go ahead.

PRINCE HASSAN: I think we are seeing two wars on two fronts.  There are 44 million Muslims in the European continent, Paul Junker has put it very elegantly that one asylum seeker who turns out to be a criminal can upset the apple cart seriously as we have seen in Paris and I want to say that this country hosts one and a half million refugees, maybe up to two million hosted by Turkey, Lebanon and Syria respectively, so if the consequences, the blow-back of all of this is going to be fighting at home as well as in the context of containing IS, I think how wars end should be thought out but to see the President of the United States, with all due respect, talking about cutting supply lines and destroying the enemy, sounds military without a strategic end game in mind.

DM: It was on the question that I think broke up a bit that I was asking how this war ends, perhaps not finally but does it end with dealing with Islamic State with President Assad still in power in Syria?

PRINCE HASSAN: Well as you said, transitional issues should be discussed a bit later but it seems to me that with the Russians showing their force on the ground and with whatever give and take there is between the Russians and the Europeans and Americans, on not only Syria but let’s not forget Ukraine and Crimea, maybe this is not my opinion that counts.  There seems to be a huge strategic imbalance in terms of Eurasia as a whole and I think that the blow-back of this Islamic threat, if it is going to be muddled with the concerns of a fearful Europe, most countries in Europe do not favour war – that’s something for the west to consider in time out.  We need time out, all of us, to consider before January possibly, how we are going to proceed in stabilising the Levant.

DM: Your Royal Highness, thank you very much indeed for your time, Prince Hassan of Jordan there joining me from Amman.