Damascus working to ensure aid delivery to all Syrians -top Assad adviser

Syria is working with a U.N. representative to find ways to deliver food and medical aid to all Syrian people isolated by the country's civil war, a top adviser to President Bashar al-Assad told a conference on Thursday via Skype from Damascus. 
 
Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban also said the Syrian government knows nothing of the whereabouts of Austin Tice, a freelance journalist and former U.S. Marine Corps officer who disappeared in 2012 while reporting on the country's civil war.
  
Shaaban's comments on aid delivery came a day after the U.S. State Department called for the World Food Program to move ahead with its planning to deliver aid by air to besieged Syrian towns, saying ground delivery of aid was not getting through in sufficient quantities.
  
"We are trying our best with the U.N. representative here to try and find the best way to make all medicine or food .... reach every single citizen in Syria," Shaaban told a conference at the National Press Club on fighting al Qaeda and Islamic State militants.