Putin Warns against Action on Syria outside U.N.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Western powers on Friday not to take unilateral action against the Syrian government outside the U.N. Security Council.
The Kremlin said Putin delivered the comments at a closed meeting of Russia's powerful Security Council that groups all the top ministers and decides strategy on the most sensitive foreign and domestic affairs.
"In the opinion of the Russian president, any attempts to act outside the U.N. Security Council will be ineffective and only undermine the authority of this international organization," news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying at the meeting.
The spokesman said Putin also rejected Western charges that Russia was inciting even more violence in Syria by blocking with China possible sanctions against its Middle East ally for the third time on Thursday.
"Members of the Russian Security Council underscored the complete inappropriateness and unacceptability of attempts to tie the tensions in Syria to the position taken by the Russian Federation," Peskov said.
His comments were issued only moments after the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution extending a U.N. monitors mission in Syria for another 30 days.
Russia welcomed the extension as a sign of compromise because it excluded an earlier call on the government of its main Middle East ally to pull out heavy weapons out of towns and other areas controlled by the armed opposition.
The mission's mandate may also be extended again should the United Nations report a de-escalation in violence and an end to the regime's use of heavy weapons such as tanks in the next month.
But nations such as the United States have called this the final extension of the missions -- originally in place to oversee the implementation of a peace plan that never went into effect -- and vowed to look for new solutions to the 16-month crisis.
Source: Agence France Presse
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