Russia Resolved, Oppostion Violence is not a way of Syria Crisis

Russia refuses to budge on Assad, Syria clashes kill 9
11 July, 2012 – Agence France Presse

DAMASCUS: Syria’s main opposition group on Wednesday failed to convince Russia to drop its support for long-time ally President Bashar Assad, as fresh clashes in Damascus challenged his beleaguered regime.

Russia refuses to shift its controversial position on the crisis in Syria, the exiled opposition Syria National Council (SNC) said after talks in Moscow with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“We have not seen a development in the Russian position. I was here one year ago and the position has not changed,” Burhan Ghalioun, SNC executive committee member and its former chief, told reporters after the meeting.

Abdel Basset Sayda, the SNC’s new head, earlier compared the conflict in his country to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

“The events in Syria are not disagreements between the opposition and the government but a revolution,” Sayda told Lavrov, whose country has seen itself cast as the last protector of its Arab ally, Syria.

Underlining the gulf between the SNC and Moscow, Lavrov said Russia wanted to understand in the talks if there were “prospects” of the opposition groups uniting and joining a platform for dialogue with the Syrian government.

On Tuesday, Moscow proposed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria that would extend the U.N. observer mission in the country without any threat of sanctions, diplomats in New York said.

The resolution was sent to the council’s other 14 members ahead of a briefing on Wednesday by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on efforts to revive his peace plan, Russia’s deputy U.N. envoy Igor Pankin told reporters.

Russia is Assad’s main ally apart from Iran and has fiercely resisted international action against the Damascus government as proposed by Washington and European powers.

Moscow has repeatedly said Assad’s fate is up to the Syrian people and defied calls by the West and the SNC to urge him to step down.

On Tuesday, Annan warned that the conflict could spread across the region as he held talks in Iran and Iraq aimed at shoring up support for his tattered peace plan, starting with an April ceasefire that has failed to materialize.

But in an implicit rebuff, the United States renewed its opposition to any role for Tehran in resolving the conflict.

“I don’t think anybody with a straight face could argue that Iran has had a positive impact on developments in Syria,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

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