Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas said in a letter to Bashar al-Assad that his election as Syrian president will help to end the country's three-year war, Damascus said on Wednesday. "Your election to the presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic guarantees Syria's unity and sovereignty, and starts of a countdown to the end of Syria's crisis and its war against terrorism," Abbas wrote, according to the Syrian presidency's Facebook page. The letter was the strongest expression of support yet to Assad from the Palestinian president and from his Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) since the outbreak of an uprising against the Syrian regime in March 2011.