Lavrov: Russia to Push for Geneva Peace Deal at U.N.
Russia will press the U.N. Security Council to this month endorse a Syria peace accord that was brokered in Geneva and has since split world powers, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.
"There is a plan to hold a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council with the participation of ministers on the Syrian issue," Lavrov said in the Russian city of Vladivostok after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"We stressed in a meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State that Russia will push for the Security Council's approval of the Geneva communique."
World powers on June 30 had agreed on a Russian-backed transition plan.
The plan, championed by former Syria peace envoy Kofi Annan and supported by the Kremlin, did not make an explicit call for President Bashar Assad to quit power.
The West swiftly made clear it saw no role for Assad in a unity government and the plan's future was put in further peril by the subsequent resignation of Annan, who was later replaced by Lakhdar Brahimi.
But Russia and China insisted the accord made no call on Assad to quit, nor did it explicitly deny him a role in the country's future. The armed opposition denounced the agreement and fighting has since escalated.
The issue is set to be debated by U.N. Security Council members on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly in New York later this month.
Lavrov also added that U.S. sanctions on Syria and Iran are harming Russian business interests.
"Unilateral U.S. sanctions against Syria and Iran are increasingly becoming extra-territorial in nature and are touching upon the interests of Russian business," Lavrov said.
He said Russian banks were particularly being affected.
Washington has imposed asset freezes against more than 100 members of the Syrian regime and barred U.S. firms from doing business with them, and slapped sanctions against the Syrian state oil firm Sytrol last month.
But Russia has stirred Western and Arab world anger by vetoing three U.N. Security Council resolutions providing for sanctions against Assad and aimed at ending the deadly 18-month conflict.
"In Syria we are not supporting any sanctions because sanctions will not bring about anything," Lavrov told reporters on the sidelines of the annual APEC summit that Russia is this year hosting in the port city of Vladivostok.
The United States has also imposed wide-ranging financial sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program in an attempt to starve Tehran of revenue, and pressed other countries to cut their imports of Iranian oil.
Source: Agence France Presse
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