MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's foreign minister said Friday that Moscow isn't discussing Syria's future without President Bashar Assad as Washington has claimed, in the latest volley in a contentious back-and-forth on how to end the bloody conflict.
Sergey Lavrov denied Thursday’s statement by
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland that Moscow and Washington
“are continuing to talk about a post-Assad transition strategy.”
Lavrov,
who met with the State Department’s No. 2 official William Burns in
Kabul on Thursday, maintained that Russia believes it’s up to the
Syrians to determine their country’s future and said foreign players
shouldn’t meddle.
“It’s not true that we are discussing Syria’s
fate after Bashar Assad,” Lavrov said following talks in Moscow with his
Iraqi counterpart. “We aren’t dealing with a regime change either
through approving unilateral actions at the United Nations Security
Council nor through taking part in some political conspiracies.”
U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has issued increasingly harsh
words over Russia’s refusal to take tougher measures on Syria, though
her accusation that Russia “dramatically” escalated the crisis in Syria
lost steam Thursday when the State Department acknowledged the
helicopters she accused Moscow of sending were actually refurbished ones
already owned by the Assad regime.
The claim had complicated the Obama administration’s larger goals for Syria and U.S.-Russia relations.
Despite
pressure from the West, Russia, along with China, has twice shielded
Syria, its last remaining ally in the Arab world, from international
sanctions over Assad’s violent crackdown on protests that have left
13,000 people dead, according to opposition groups.
Lavrov argued
that an international conference on Syria that Russia has proposed
should focus on persuading the Syrian parties to sit down for talks. He
said that a June 30 meeting on Syria in Geneva proposed by U.N. and Arab
League envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, should pursue the same goal,
warning that Russia would oppose any attempt to use the conference to
determine Syria’s future.
“This meeting should be aimed at
mobilizing resources that foreign players have to create conditions
needed to start an all-Syrian political process, not to predetermine its
direction.”
He warned against using the conference to “justify any future unilateral actions.”
Lavrov
said that Russia believes that a conference on Syria it’s proposing
should bring together the five permanent members of the U.N. Security
Council along with all Syria’s neighbors, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Arab
League, the European Union and Iran.
In an apparent reference to
the U.S. objections against Iran’s participation, Lavrov said the
conference organizers should be driven by a desire to settle the
conflict, not “ideological preferences.”
In an opinion piece in
the Huffington Post, Lavrov insisted that “Russia is not a defender of
the current regime in Damascus and has no political, economic or other
reasons for becoming one.”
He also reaffirmed criticism of Assad,
saying that “the main responsibility for the crisis that has swept over
the country lies with the Syrian government, that has failed to take the
course of reform in due time or draw conclusions from the deep changes
unfolding in international relations.”
But Lavrov also argued that
a push for an immediate ouster of Assad would plunge Syria into an
all-out war. “Pressing for an immediate ousting of Bashar al-Assad,
contrary to the aspirations of a considerable segment of Syrian society
that still relies on this regime for its security and well-being, would
mean plunging Syria into a protracted and bloody civil war,” Lavrov
wrote.
