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Moscow and London trying to over come differences over Syria.

March 16, 2013   ·   0 Comments

Photo: RIA Novosti

The Syrian “rebels” have accused Assad he wouldn’t fight Israel enough. Let’s arm the “rebels” in Syria, to call them later terrorists.

Last summer’s visit by President Vladimir Putin to London started a thaw which many hoped would end a 6-year cool-off in Russia’s relations with the UK. Meeting in London this week, the Russian and the British Defense and Foreign Ministers tried to make this thaw a little warmer. Unfortunately, to no avail.

The main stumbling block was Syria. Foreign Secretary William Hague accused the Syrian regime of unwillingness to enter into a dialogue with the opposition:
Importantly, his pronouncements came against the background of media reports about covert UK arms shipments to the Syrian rebels and of a government-sponsored anti-Assad PR campaign which included a visit by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan and widely televised and billboarded calls to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees from Syria.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned of unintended consequences if Western powers continued to arm the Syrian rebels:

“According to available evidence, the strongest of the rebel groups is Jabhat al-Nusra, which is listed by the United States as terrorist. Arming it may create a situation similar to the one seen in Mali, where France is spearheading a UN-backed operation to rout terrorist groups who were armed by their foreign backers during the anti-Gaddafi uprising in Libya. True, Syria is a humanitarian disaster zone. But addressing this situation by arming the rebels can only make matters worse.”

We have a comment from Russian defense analyst Dr Anton Chernov:

“As was expected, the sides at the London talks failed to strike common ground on Syria. The scenario of the Syrian conflict is strongly reminiscent of the events in Libya. Third countries, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, already act as conduits for Western arms to reach the Syrian rebels. Moreover, moves have been made to lift the official embargo on supplying arms to the anti-Assad opposition.”

Fortunately, however, the latest EU summit held in Brussels on Friday stopped short of scrapping the embargo.

Other topics at the London talks included the Middle East, Iran and Afghanistan.

This is what Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu had to say:

“NATO’s scheduled military pullout in late 2014 will create new problems unless Afghanistan is equipped with national forces capable of enforcing security throughout the Afghan territory, including Afghanistan’s north, which poses particular security and drug threats to former Soviet Central Asia and Russia. What is also important, the NATO-led coalition must supply the UN Security Council with a report about the outcome of its 13-year mission in Afghanistan.”

Symptomatically, at the closing news conference, there was no mention of the case of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer who died in mysterious circumstances in London in 2006. A few weeks before the talks, the British authorities classified parts of the Litvinenko file as top secret and made them unavailable to the media.

The positive outcome of the London talks boiled down to a schedule of consultations between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the British Foreign Office and to an agreement to make 2014 a special year of cultural exchanges between the Russian Federation and the UK.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_03_16/Moscow-London-in-high-level-diplomacy-round/

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