Russia says Assad won’t leave post
Official says Syrian leader determined to finish term
MOSCOW – Russia’s foreign minister said Saturday that Syrian President Bashar Assad has no intention of stepping down and that it would be impossible to try to persuade him to do so.
After a meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.’s envoy for the Syrian crisis, Sergey Lavrov also said that the Syrian opposition risks sacrificing many more lives if it continues to insist on Assad leaving office as a precondition for holding talks on Syria’s future.
Assad “has repeatedly said publicly and privately, including in his meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi in Damascus not long ago, that he does not intend to leave for anywhere, that he will stay to the end in his post, that he will, as he expressed it, defend the Syrian people, Syrian sovereignty and so forth,” Lavrov said. “There’s no possibility to change this position.”
Brahimi warned that the country’s civil war could plunge the entire region into chaos by sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring nations, but his talks in Moscow produced no sign of progress toward settling the crisis.
Brahimi and Lavrov both said after their meeting that the 21-month-old Syrian conflict can only be settled through talks, while admitting that the parties in the conflict have shown no desire for compromise. Neither official hinted at a possible solution that would persuade the Syrian government and the opposition to agree to a cease-fire and sit down for talks about a political transition.
Brahimi, who arrived in Moscow on a one-day trip following his talks in Damascus with Assad this week, voiced concern about the escalation of the conflict, which he said is becoming “more and more sectarian.”
Russia has been the main supporter of Assad’s regime since the uprising began in March 2011, using its veto at the U.N. Security Council along with China to shield its last Mideast ally from international sanctions.
Lavrov said Russia would continue to oppose any U.N. resolution that would call for international sanctions against Assad and open the way for a foreign intervention in Syria. And while he again emphasized that Russia “isn’t holding onto Bashar Assad,” he added that Moscow continues to believe the opposition demand for his resignation as a precondition for peace talks is “counterproductive.”