UAE, Saudi Arabia willing to deploy group troops to Syria

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is ready to send ground troops to Syria as part of an international coalition to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a top official has said.

The UAE’s announcement comes just days after Saudi Arabia said it is ready to deploy its own troops, if US-led coalition leaders agree to the offer. The Saudi offer is expected to be discussed when the United States convenes a meeting of defence ministers from coalition countries fighting the militant group in Brussels next week.

After Saudi Arabia’s declaration, neighbouring United Arab Emirates said it is ready to send its own ground troops.

"Our position throughout has been that a real campaign against [ISIL] has to include a ground force," the UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said at a news conference in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.

Gargash added that "US leadership on this" would also be a prerequisite for the UAE.

He did not elaborate about how many troops the UAE could send - but added: "We are not talking about thousands of troops".

Syria, however, have responded by warning against foreign intervention, and threatened that all foreign army soldiers who enter Syria without the consent of President Bashar al-Assad’s government would “return home in wooden coffins.”

"Any ground intervention in Syria, without the consent of the Syrian government, will be considered an aggression that should be resisted by every Syrian citizen," Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said on Saturday.

"I regret to say that they will return home in wooden coffins."

Muallem appeared to indicate a boosted confidence that the government's recent military advances against opposition fighters in Aleppo put it "on track" towards winning the five-year civil war.

"Like it or not, our battlefield achievements indicate that we are headed towards the end of the crisis," he said, before calling on rebel fighters to "come to their senses" and lay down their weapons.

When asked about the possibility of Saudi ground troops entering Syria, he said although it was unlikely, "with the crazy Saudi leadership nothing is far-fetched".