In Moscow, Syrian Opposition Slams Russia for Aiding Violence

Syria's main exiled opposition group on Wednesday slammed Russia for giving a green light to violence after failing to convince Moscow to drop its support for President Bashar Assad.

Syrian National Council (SNC) chief Abdel Basset Sayda met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in rare talks at the Russian foreign ministry but could not detect any shift in the Russian policy that has angered opponents of Assad.

At the foreign ministry, Sayda diplomatically confirmed that Russia had a "different position" to the rebels' insistence that "there cannot be talk of a solution until Assad quits power".

But later he left all niceties aside to launch a full-scale attack on Russian policy which he said was responsible for allowing the escalating violence to continue through arms supplies and moral support.

"We reject the Russian policy -- however it is presented -- as this policy of supporting the regime is allowing the violence to continue," Sayda told reporters at a news conference.

"The Syrian people continue to suffer because of the position of Russia at the U.N. Security Council where Russia has used its veto" to block two resolutions against the Syrian regime, he said.

But Sayda said the situation could be transformed if Russia changed its policy as it was Damascus' only significant ally other than Iran.

"The regime feels that it has Iran and Moscow behind its back. If there was no cultural, moral or military support from Russia then the Syrian regime could not continue its policy against its own people," he said.

Russia said Wednesday it had no plans to impose an arms embargo on Syria and would fulfill a contract to deliver air defense systems, despite a pledge to ship no arms to the country under new contracts.

Sayda said: "Legal and moral responsibility must make Russia intervene and Russia must compel the regime to halt the killing of its own people," he added.

Moscow has refused to call on Assad to relinquish power, saying that Syria's political future cannot be imposed from the outside and must be decided via a dialogue involving all parties.

Lavrov at the start of the talks earlier offered no hope of a breakthrough in disagreements between Moscow and the opposition over how to end violence which the opposition says has left over 17,000 people dead.

"Sometimes your organization has questions about what we are doing and we want to clear up these questions today so that there are no doubts," Lavrov said.

He added that Russia wanted to understand in the talks if there were any "prospects" of the opposition groups uniting and joining a platform for dialogue with the Syrian government.

Alexander Filonyuk of the Russian Academy of Sciences said while the sheer fact of the meeting between the opposition and Lavrov taking place was important there was little chance of the two sides narrowing their differences.

"I think that the Syrian opposition will insist on its point of view at any cost. But Russia does not share it. And Russia has no reason to change its position either now or in the future," he told Agence France Presse.

Russia on Tuesday proposed a U.N. Security Council resolution on the crisis that would extend the U.N. mission in the country but did not contain any threat of sanctions against Syria or action against Assad, diplomats said.

In a dismissive reaction, the French foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the Russian resolution was "below the expectations of most of the international community."

Moscow's close ties with Damascus date back to its cooperation with Assad's late father Hafez Assad under the Soviet Union. Analysts say Russia is above all unwilling to lose its last strategic ally in the Middle East.