The West is trying to divert attention and disperse efforts in order to make it difficult to reach agreements within the framework of the Constitutional Committee of Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the "Primakov Readings" on Wednesday.
"We will inevitably face the fact that reaching a fair agreement will be hindered in every way possible," he said. - "The so-called Small Group of the Syrian Constitutional Committee, created as a spur to the Astana format, works in this vein, and now they are trying to create some additional mechanisms. I think they are trying to distract the attention of the Constitutional Committee and disperse their efforts. These are the tactics being used."
The Russian foreign minister draws attention to the fact that "the West is trying to revise the concept of the Constitutional Committee." Instead of direct negotiations and reaching agreements on relevant constitutional issues, they are now promoting an approach they call "one step at a time." According to him, the essence of this initiative, which has been put forward by, among others, the current UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, is to encourage Damascus to take concrete steps to reach a compromise in response to promises to provide counter steps from the opposition and a possible easing of sanctions.
"President [of Syria Bashar] al-Assad has taken a very significant step - he announced an amnesty, people were released, and we ask Pedersen and Western colleagues: please, he has taken a step without any conditions, where is the answer? But there is no answer," Lavrov stated.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Bernard Gagnon/Creative Commons
Based on materials from TASS