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William Jones, with the Executive Intelligence Review has joined Press TV’s Top 5 to shed more light on the upcoming Geneva II peace conference and Ankara’s decision to station Patriot Missiles on its borders with Syria.

- Looking at how things have progressed as far as the war in Syria goes, everybody’s eyes is on the Geneva II Peace Conference and yet there is this extension of the deployment of the Patriot Missile batteries on Turkish soil near the Syrian border.

Will not that be seen an escalation in tensions?

- Well, the problem with a lot of these stationing of missiles creating a new situation, is that they often do not get pulled back once they are done, once the moves have been made.

In this case there are also other motives. The United States, of course is interested in keeping Turkey at the table if these talks were to proceed and of the Turks then requested that the missiles remain, the US probably did not want to cause any flurries with them in the danger that they might renege on participating or giving support to Geneva but it is also the case that these batteries that have been placed there, Turkey being a NATO country, that they might not be going away anytime soon, simply as a matter course.

So we really have to stayed tuned for that but it does create a situation, it creates a bad climate when you are trying to create the idea that we are approaching peaceful resolution of this situation.

- Right. So now how do you see the Syrian government responding to it? When these missile batteries were first deployed, the government of President Bashar al-Assad did not take it sitting down. They did condemn it and said it was an act of aggression.

Do you see them responding in a similar fashion now?

- I do not think that they will. At least not..., unless there are other reasons for them to respond; unless there are some action on the part of the Turks that needs to be responded, that requires a response from the Syrian side. Everything at the moment seems to be moving towards them sitting down at the table and discussing peace.

And if it continues moving in that direction, I do not think the fact that these missiles are simply stationed there, is going to become a matter that will unalterably affect the outcome of that.

In the long-term, of course, the issue could be more problematic that if some kind of agreement is made in Geneva, it would be contradictory for the Turks who place those missiles there, specifically for the case of a possible hostility with Syria, for them to maintain those missiles at that point.

At that point it could become a more contentious issue but I do not think that it is going to upset the move towards diplomacy at this point.

There will be some words over it but I do not think that it is going to alter anything significantly.