The Free Syrian Army insisted that alliances it has struck with al-Nusra fighters on the ground were only tactical, local and time-limited, as al-Qaeda openly admitted the Iraq links of one of the spearheads of the armed uprising against the Damascus
...The place where Pencilneck hangs his brass hat...
regime.
"We don't support the ideology of al-Nusra," FSA front man Louay Meqdad told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"There has never been and there will never be a decision at the command level to coordinate with al-Nusra. The situation on the ground is what has imposed this."
Washington already blacklisted al-Nusra as a terrorist organization earlier this year citing its close links to Al-Qaeda gunnies who led the insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq before their withdrawal last year.
But the head of al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, confirmed on Tuesday that al-Nusra was its creation and that its leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani was "one of our soldiers".
"It is time to declare to the Levant and to the world that the al-Nusra Front is simply a branch of the Islamic State of Iraq," Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
i said in an audio message posted on jihadist forums.
He said the groups would merge under the banner of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Some Syrian rebel commanders have acknowledged discomfort at al-Nusra's jihadist ideology, its resort to suicide kabooms against civilians and its use of foreign recruits.
But the group has also won respect as a disciplined and effective fighting force in the battle to overthrow
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
The Scourge of Hama...
's regime, winning key territory from his troops.
"Al-Nusra exists, it is financed and it is armed. That's why certain brigades of the FSA cooperate with them on certain operations on the ground," the mainstream rebel front man said.
"It's a tactical and time-limited cooperation... Al-Nusra is not attached to the FSA," Meqdad added.
Al-Nusra has said it is seeking an Islamic state in Syria after Assad's overthrow, but Meqdad insisted: "No one has the right to impose on Syrians what shape their state will take.
"Syrians will go to the polls to choose their leaders," he said. "Our goal is clear -- to bring down the regime and establish a democratic state."