Russia Unaware of Any Assad Plan to Quit

Russia said Friday after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Syria envoy that it was unaware of any plans by President Bashar al-Assad to leave power.

Senior Russian diplomats said they also told special envoy Fred Hof that Moscow was willing to agree changes to international envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan for Syria as long as they kept the tattered initiative alive.

"I do not know anything about such plans by the Syrian president," Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told the state news agency RIA Novosti when asked after the meeting if Moscow was aware of any intention of Assad to step down.

Hof's visit came as pressure mounted on Russia - a Soviet-era ally of Syria believed to have the world's greatest remaining influence on the regime - to back a political transition that would ultimately see Assad go.

Moscow has publicly distanced itself from Assad in recent weeks while still supplying his army with weapons and adamantly vowing to resist all calls for foreign military intervention aimed at halting the 15-month crisis.

Russia has made a counter-proposal - met with great skepticism by the United States - that would see regional players such as Iran sit down with world powers and try to negotiate a joint strategy suitable to all Syrians.

But it has also refused to give up on Annan's six-point peace plan despite the international envoy's admission that alternatives may soon need to be sought to the three-month-old effort.

The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement issued after the meeting with Hof that the two sides discussed "the practical aspects of Russia's initiative to urgently convene an international conference on Syria."

Bogdanov for his part said Russia was willing to support "corrections" to Annan's initiative "to ensure the best-possible conditions for its implementation by all sides."

He did not specify what those corrections would be.

Annan told the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday that "clearly, the time has come to determine what more can be done to secure implementation of the plan - and what other options exist to address the crisis."

A diplomat present at his subsequent closed-door briefing to U.N. Security Council members said Annan also renewed calls for the major powers to warn Assad of "clear consequences" if he failed to comply with the peace plan.

Russia argues that it has been pressing Assad's representatives on an almost daily basis and charges that open Arab world support for Syrian rebels was just as big an obstacle to peace.