The US must choose whether it wants to stage a peace conference on Syria or keep fueling the rebels’ hopes of victory as it’s impossible to do both things at the same time, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said.
Lavrov told Bloomberg that Russia wants to understand if their
partners in America and the United Nations are really consistent
with the idea of the Geneva 2 conference on Syria as their
actions keep sending the wrong message to the country’s
opposition.
The US and its European allies are considering arms supplies and
a no-fly zone over Syria to help the rebels in their fight
against the forces loyal to president, Bashar Assad.
“The message the opposition is getting: ‘Guys, don’t go to
Geneva. Don’t say that you are going to negotiate with the
regime. Soon things will change in your favor.’ So, that’s what
we want to clarify. It’s either the conference or the instigation
of the opposition not to be flexible. I don’t think it’s possible
to do both at the same time,” Lavrov said.
The Foreign Minister reminded that Russia has been pushing for
the peace solution “irrespective of the situation on the
ground,” while the West started speaking of a conference only
after Assad’s forces began advancing on the rebels.
“They weren’t ready to discuss it when many people believed that
the opposition would take Damascus in recent weeks,” he
stressed. “If now they’ll be moving in the direction of what
some opposition leaders are saying – namely, let’s first restore
military balance on the ground and then we’ll go the conference.
This’ll be a disaster for all diplomatic efforts because this
would never end.”
According to Lavrov, Russia, the US and the UN are currently
working on the list of invitees to the Geneva 2 conference, with
two key issues currently being unsolved.
The first problem is the representation of the rebels at the talks as “not each and every important opposition group wants to go under the umbrella of the [Syrian National] Coalition because” because it’s “taking quite radical positions” and doesn’t have any vision for the country’s future.
The FM also said that “the most effective military group
fighting the regime in Syria”, the Jabhat al-Nusra, isn’t
going to be invited to the talks at all.
“It’s not for them to decide whether they’ll come to the
conference or not. They can’t be even considered. They are
terrorists and they must be treated as terrorists,” he explained.
The second problem with the invitees’ list is the participation
of foreign states in the Geneva 2 conference.
“We’re absolutely convinced that all Arab neighbors of Syria
must be invited,” Lavrov said. “And Iran must be there
that’s something, which I believe is absolutely unavoidable if we
want the process, which is inclusive, and if we want all
important outside players to be there to push the Syrians to an
agreement. And so far there are doubts on the part of the US
regarding the invitation of Iran and, I believe, this is
delaying.”
The Russian FM once again warned the US against arming the
rebels, but said that weapons are “anyway” coming to Syria.
“And if you take stock of what is being used by the opposition
you would find a lot of arms shipped by the West, including the
US, to the Gulf countries and to other countries in the
region,” he stressed. “So, this smuggling continues and
this is very dangerous. Because the leading opposition force on
the ground is very extremist.”
The Geneva 2 conference is designed to be a follow-up to the last
year’s international meeting in Geneva that drafted a peace
roadmap for Syria.
It was originally planned to take place in mid-June, with no new
date for the event being announced so far.
With the death toll rising to over 90,000 people, Russian
president, Vladimir Putin, and his US counterpart, Barack Obama,
agreed that diplomacy offers the best solution to the Syrian
conflict during their talks at the G8 summit this week.