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Security Council will never sanction Syria bombing - Lavrov
Published: 31 January, 2012, 17:15
RIA Novosti / Sergey Guneev
TAGS: UN, Russia, Politics, Syria
The Russian Foreign Minister has said that combat aircraft and bombs will never solve the political crisis in Syria.
“If they tell Bashar Asad to leave and he refuses to leave, what can they do? Summon combat aircraft? Bomb him? We have already been through that and the Security Council would never approve of that, I guarantee you that,”Sergey Lavrov told the press in Sydney on Tuesday.
The head of Russian diplomacy was keen to point out that his country had never said retaining Bashar Assad in power was a precondition for a settlement.However Lavrov insisted that the fate of Syria must only be decided by the Syrian people.
“What we were saying was different – that the decision must be made by Syrians, that all groups of Syrians must get together at the negotiation table and reach an agreement. They must decide who must go and who must become a replacement,” the Russian minister said. Lavrov also said that Russia was strongly against any foreign interference in the talks and particularly opposed barring any Syrian figures or groups from negotiations.
The Russian Foreign Minister also said he was not deliberately ignoring phone calls from US Secretary of State Secretary Hillary Clinton, but simply could not violate diplomatic protocol by disrupting scheduled negotiations with Australian diplomats.
“Literally today I was told by phone that Hillary Clinton has called and wanted to talk. They offered an exact time and this was in the middle of my meetings with Australian partners. We naturally told the Americans that during the time that they find convenient I will be at the talks and it is not in our diplomatic tradition to insult the partners in talks or to show disrespect to those with whom we agree to meet,” Lavrov said.
When reporters asked why Clinton had complained that she could not get through for a long time, Lavrov suggested that it could probably be explained by manners.
“I don't know why Hillary would need to talk to me so urgently,” Lavrov said, and added that Russia’s top diplomats in New York were always available for negotiations.
Aides to Russia's Foreign Minister told RT soon after Lavrov’s comment that the information that the US State Secretary tried to reach Lavrov for 24hrs was a ploy to turn public opinion against Russia.
The US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington on Monday that Hillary Clinton had been trying unsuccessfully to connect with Sergey Lavrov.
"The secretary, frankly, has been trying to get Foreign Minister Lavrov on the phone for about 24 hours," she said in Washington. "That's proven difficult," the US official said.
Later in the day the Russian Foreign Minister told the Australian news channel ABC that his country would fulfill signed deals to supply weapons to the Syrian authorities, but added that the Russian weapons were not of a kind that could be used against demonstrators.
“We have signed the contracts and we must fulfill them,” Lavrov said.
The minister also said that Russia had no intention of persuading the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, to stand down.
“Russian policy is not in asking anyone to resign. Change of regimes is not our profession,” Lavrov said. At the same time, the Russian official repeated that his country was “neither friend nor ally” of President Assad.
31.01, 17:04
18 comments
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“Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which was recognised as a concept by all countries (Russia and China included) at the UN World Leader’s Summit in 2005. Responsibility to Protect is a concept for intervention in a state by the international community for the prevention of genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass killings and human rights violations taking place, in a country which is unwilling (or unable) to stop it. In the event of any such acts occurring, the wider international community has a collective responsibility to take whatever action is necessary to prevent it.
So many strategic thoughts in this forum.
Is anybody recognizing, there are thousands of people dying in syria right now, tenthousands of lives are destroyed already.
It's not about east-west-national-proud-stuff but pure humanity.
Assad is a cruel massmurder, no way to support him anymore.
Of course US is no real democracy neither is russia, but at this point all nations should act togehter.
As I have made clear in my articles, one way Kremlin leaders likely hope to sidestep appearing responsible for launching a nuclear war is by provoking the West into throwing the first major punches of world war three. This is why NATO has been lured into the Balkans and why supposedly "former" Russian puppet states like North Korea and Iraq have been gradually pushing toward the brink of renewed conflicts with the West. As I have been emphasizing in my global war articles, either prior to or as part of drawing the West into major conflicts at these flashpoints, Moscow is planning to stage a right-wing coup, possibly involving Vladimir Zhirinovsky's bogus rise to power. Since such a coup will be attributed to the failure of Western-style reform in Russia (possibly on top of Western military action against Russian allies-of-old like the Serbs?), the subsequent world war will be blamed on the West's failure to support Russia, the general shortcomings of Western democracy and Western imperialist military aggression. All in all, by staging a right-wing coup in Russia and drawing the West into major conflicts with historical Russian allies like the Serbs, North Korea and Iraq, an ideal scenario is created in which Moscow can unleash a global nuclear war and have it appear to be the West's own fault.
As a key part of the above strategy to reverse the blame for the coming war on to the West, Kremlin military planners are likely hoping to provoke Israel into launching the first nuclear blow of world war three. As explained toward the end of my articles "A Global War?" and "Global War Alert", with the U.S. and NATO forces tied-up in conflicts on the Korean Peninsula and in the Balkans, the way will be opened for Russia's "Last Dash to the South" (the title of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's supposed autobiography) and an Arab onslaught against Israel since the Western powers will be unable to defend the Middle East and protect Israel like occurred during the Arab surprise attack on the Jewish state in 1973. Thus, Israel will be forced to resort to its "Samson Option" of nuclear retaliation against the Arabs and Russia in the face of being overrun. (Notably, a chemical and/or biological missile attack against Israel by Saddam Hussein, backed by a new Russian dictator like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, may even be sufficient to elicit an Israel nuclear strike against Russia.)