DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- Syria’s veteran Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, a career diplomat who became one of the country’s most prominent faces to the outside world during the foreign-backed war on Damascus, died on Monday. He was 79.
Al-Muallem, who served as ambassador to Washington for nine years, starting in 1990, was a close confidant of President Bashar al-Assad known for unrelenting position against foreign-backed terrorists in Syria.
"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’,” Muallem said in a 2012 newspaper interview.
A soft spoken, jovial man with a dry sense of humor, al-Muallem was also known for his ability to defuse tensions with a joke.
During the current crisis, he often held news conferences in Damascus detailing the Syrian government’s position. Unwavering in the face of Western pressure, he repeatedly vowed that the insurgency, which he said was part of a Western conspiracy against Syria for its anti-Israel stances, would be crushed.
A short and portly man with white hair, his health was said to be deteriorating in recent years with heart problems. The state-run SANA news agency reported his death, without immediately offering a cause.
Born to a Sunni Muslim family in Damascus in 1941, al-Muallem attended public schools in Syria and later traveled to Egypt, where he studied at Cairo University, graduating in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
He returned to Syria and began working at the foreign ministry in 1964, rising to the top post in 2006.
His first mission outside the country as a diplomat in the 1960s was to open the Syrian Embassy in the African nation of Tanzania. In 1966 he moved to work in the Syrian Embassy in the Saudi city of Jeddah and a year later he moved  to the Syrian Embassy in Madrid.
In 1972, he headed the Syrian mission to London and in 1975 moved

 to Romania, where he spent five years as ambassador. He then returned to Damascus, where he headed the ministry’s documentation office until 1984, when he was named as the head of the foreign minister’s office.
He was appointed as Syria’s ambassador to Washington in 1990, spending nine years in the U.S.
In 2006, he was appointed foreign minister at a time when Damascus was under pressure from Western nations and their Arab allies following the scandalous assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri a year earlier.
The assassination apparently served the wish of some Lebanese, Arab and Western leaders, forcing Syria to end nearly three decades of military presence in Lebanon to protect the small neighbor from the occupying regime of Israel by pulling out its troops in April that year.
Al-Muallem became the most senior politician to visit Lebanon in 2006, after Syrian troops withdrew. He attended an Arab foreign ministers meeting during the 34-day war between the Zionist regime and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, a strong ally of Syria.
"I wish I were a fighter with the resistance,” al-Muallem said in Beirut at the time.
After the foreign-backed sedition and terrorist insurgency in March 2011, al-Muallem was tasked with holding news conferences in Damascus to defend the country’s fight.
During a news conference a year after the war began, al-Muallem was asked to comment about then French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe’s comment that the Syrian government’s days were numbered.
Al-Muallem answered with a smile on his face: "If Mr. Juppe believes that the days of the government are numbered I tell him, wait and you will see.”
"This is if God gives him a long age,” al-Muallem said.
In February 2013, he was the first Syrian official to say during a visit to Moscow that the government was ready to hold talks even with those "who carried arms.”
In early 2014, he headed Syria’s negotiating team during two rounds of peace talks with the opposition in Switzerland. The talks, which eventually collapsed, marked the first time that members of the Syrian government sat face-to-face with Syrian opposition figures.
Al-Muallem’s last public appearance was at the opening of an international refugee conference last Wednesday in Damascus, when he appeared to be in ill health. The following day, he did not attend the closing ceremony of the event, which was co-hosted with Russia.
Muallem recently attacked the Caesar Act - the toughest U.S. 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.
"He was known for his honorable patriotic positions,” the government said in a statement.
In Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif expressed his condolences, praising al-Muallem for his "important role” in defending Syria’s national interests and security.
Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, hailed Muallem as a diplomat who "understood the importance of Syrian-Russian relations.”
"We have lost a very reliable partner and sincere friend,” said Bogdanov, who was formerly stationed in Damascus. He stressed that he had been in "almost constant contact” with Muallem in the 35 years he had known him.Al-Muallem is survived by his wife, Sawsan Khayat and three children, Tarek, Shatha and Khaled. He was buried on Monday afternoon and prayers were held at a mosque in Damascus.