A top Syrian minister on Tuesday held out the prospect of strongman Bashar Assad stepping down as part of a negotiated settlement to 17 months of bloodshed that activists say has killed 23,000.

The comments from Syria's Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil came following talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Moscow officials who are keen to keep their sway over the Soviet-era ally in case of the fall of Assad.

Russia on Tuesday defended its ally Syria against the threat of outside interference after U.S. President Barack Obama called the use of chemical weapons by the regime a "red line".

"There should be no interference from the outside," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a day after Washington raised the possibility of unilateral military action.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a senior visiting Syrian minister on Tuesday that the regime's current efforts to end 17 months of violence were insufficient and required further effort.

"From what we see in Syria, it seems that this is not enough," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Lavrov as telling Syria's Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil at the start of their talks.

The three members of punk band Pussy Riot sentenced to two years in prison for performing an anti-Vladimir Putin song in Russia's top church will not ask the president for a pardon, their lawyer said Monday.

"Our clients will not ask for a pardon," defense lawyer Nikolai Polozov told Agence France Presse on Monday, adding: "Literally this is what they said: 'Let them go to hell with their pardon'."

Some Russian activists have sued Madonna for millions of dollars, claiming they were offended by her support for gay rights during a recent concert in St. Petersburg.

Anti-gay sentiment is strong in Russia, particularly in St. Petersburg, where a law passed in February makes it illegal to promote homosexuality to minors. The author of that law has pointed to the presence of children as young as 12 at Madonna's concert on Aug. 9.

Six policemen died in the volatile Russian Caucasus region of Ingushetia early Sunday in a suicide bombing at the funeral of their colleague, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

"In a private house where the funeral was taking place for a neighborhood policeman, a suicide bomber triggered an explosive device on his body," the committee, which investigates major killings, said in a statement.

Russia welcomed the new international envoy for the conflict in Syria and said it expected him build on the work of predecessor Kofi Annan, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday.

"We proceed on the assumption that Lakhdar Brahimi will base his work on the platform of the existing 'road map' of a Syrian settlement -- Kofi Annan's peace plan and the final communique of the June ministerial meeting of the Action Group on Syria in Geneva and also on the relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions," the ministry said.

Russia on Friday rejected a proposal to set up no-fly zones to help civilians flee fighting in Syria's border areas after the United States said it was ready to consider the move.

"You have to solve citizen security issues using methods put in practice by international humanitarian law," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Sky News Arabia in an interview to be aired in full on Saturday and released to Russian media.

European activists rallied Friday amid global condemnation of a Russian court's two year jail sentences on three members of female punk group Pussy Riot over an anti-Vladimir Putin stunt in a Moscow church.

The European Union's Foreign Affairs chief Catherine Ashton said a "serious question mark" hung over Russian justice and called on Moscow to reverse the judgment.

A Moscow court on Friday found guilty three young members of a feminist punk band who captured global attention by defying the Russian authorities and ridiculing President Vladimir Putin in a church.

Judge Marina Syrova said the three Pussy Riot protest band members had displayed a "clear disrespect toward society" by staging their February 21 "Punk Prayer" performance inside Russia's most important church.