By Maya Gebeily and Timour Azhari
DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Syria’s new interim prime minister said he aimed to bring back millions of Syrian refugees, protect all citizens and provide basic services but acknowledged it would be difficult because the country lacked foreign currency.
“In the coffers there are only Syrian pounds worth little or nothing. One U.S. dollar buys 35,000 of our coins,” Mohammed al-Bashir told Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.
“We have no foreign currency and as for loans and bonds we are still collecting data. So yes, financially we are very bad.”
Bashir ran the rebel-led Salvation Government in a tiny pocket of northwestern Syria, before the 12-day lightning rebel offensive swept into Damascus and toppled veteran autocrat President Bashar al-Assad.
Rebuilding Syria will be a colossal task following a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Cities have been bombed to ruins, swathes of countryside depopulated and the economy gutted by …