Russia accused the West on Friday of being an "accomplice" to the violence in Syria and said the country’s opposition bore full responsibility for ending the ongoing violence.
Russia accused the West on Friday of being an "accomplice" to the violence in Syria and said the country's opposition bore full responsibility for ending the ongoing violence.
Speaking to ITAR-TASS news agency, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that “Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's promise to stage a new constitutional referendum meant that it was now up to the armed resistance movement to take the next step.”
He also warned that “Russia was ready to follow this month's veto of a draft UN Security Council resolution on the crisis with additional strong measures if the West continues to refuse acknowledging the opposition's role in the crisis.”
"The Syrian leadership has assured us of its readiness to quickly hold a referendum on a new constitution and move toward elections," Ryabkov said.
"This means that the opposition bears full responsibility for improving the situation and finding a way to stop the bloodshed… Western states that push the Syrian opposition into uncompromising measures, which arm them and give them advice and instructions are accomplices in the process of inflaming the crisis," he added.
"The responsibility rests with those who while holding the levers of influence over the opposition still fail to call it to order and demand that it accepts the Syrian government's offers and begin real talks,” the Russian deputy foreign minister further pointed out, warning that “Russia will have to again and again resort to strong measures at the Security Council if Western states introduce new resolutions on the crisis that only blame Assad.”
In addition, Ryabkov dismissed joint efforts by the United States and Turkey to organize an international conference on the crisis and possible relief efforts for the opposition.
"Russia does not share the West's views about so-called humanitarian intervention," he said.
