PRESIDENT Putin has accused the West of pursuing policies that had destabilised states in the Arab world and now risked creating chaos in Syria.
‘The most important thing is that our partners cannot stop themselves,’ news agencies quoted Putin as saying at his local Moscow residence at a meeting with local residents of the Ryazan region in central Russia.
‘They have already created a situation of chaos in many territories and are now continuing the same policy in other countries – including Syria,’ said Putin.
Putin’s tough talk comes a day after British Prime Minister David Cameron told the UN General Assembly that nations like Russia and China who vetoed sanctions resolutions on Syria had left a ‘terrible stain’ on the United Nations’ reputation.
Countering the accusations, Putin used apocalyptic language to warn that Syria risked seeing the kind of bloody chaos that followed the Roman Empire’s invasion of Carthage and the great city’s fall in 146 BC.
He described this as the world’s first example ‘of wide-scale ethnic cleansing’.
One fable said the Romans then salted corpses to make sure that nothing ever grew there – a process Putin described in bloody detail and warned might be repeated again in Syria.
In his opinion, ‘the first large-scale ethnic cleansing which is known to mankind occurred between the Roman Empire and Carthage, which is situated on the territory of North Africa’.
‘Not only did the Roman Empire capture and occupy Carthage, but, then it destroyed everything, slaughtered everyone, salt was also sprinkled so that nothing grows,’ Putin noted.
He said that one should talk today not only about many good things, which European culture inherited from the Roman Empire, but also about such events.
In Putin’s opinion, Russia, for its part, ‘always advantageously differed from other countries’, because ‘it has evolved as a multi-ethnic, multi-faith state’. According to him, ‘from the beginning our leading faith, Orthodoxy, was very tolerant towards other religions’.
‘The top priority is to ensure that a representative of every, even the smallest ethnic group, if he lives on this territory and is a citizen of this country, feels that he is completely equal with everyone else, so that he understands that he personally and his children can realize the most ambitious plans and that there are no restrictions for him in anything, there will be no infringements for him,’ the Russian president said, expressing his confidence.
According to him, the Russian state ‘has never imposed its will, did not come to anyone with its own rules’.
‘If we exclude the Soviet period. This was not only our fault and guilt, but the state ideology. We tried to promote the idea of a global revolution to other territories,’ Putin said, qualifying his statement.
He said that on the whole, however, ‘we have always treated within the country all ethnic groups, peoples, religions very respectfully and tried to project this to the international stage’.
He stressed that ‘the preservation of interfaith peace is extremely important’ for Russia and called for this task to be solved with the involvement of the whole society.
‘We would really like not to see what happened in history many centuries ago repeated again today,’ the strongman Russian leader stressed.
But he then argued that ‘something similar happens when strong countries try to force weak ones to follow their own rules of conduct and their moral codes.’
Putin has often used colourful and forceful language to make his point in disputes with the West over policies ranging from the conduct of war to his own human rights record.
Cameron had used the UN General Assembly podium to effectively accuse Russia of having the blood of Syrian children on its hands
‘The blood of these young children is a terrible stain on the reputation of this United Nations,’ Cameron said in reference to a death toll that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said has reached more than 30,000.
‘And in particular, a stain on those who have failed to stand up to these atrocities and in some cases aided and abetted President (Bashar al-Assad’s) reign of terror.’
Meanwhile, fighting on an ‘unprecedented’ scale on Friday shook Syria’s second city Aleppo, where ‘rebels’ have declared a decisive battle, residents and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
The fighting is unprecedented and has not stopped since Thursday. The clashes used to be limited to one or two blocks of a district, but now the fighting is on several fronts.
Residents in the central districts of Sulimaniyeh and Sayyid Ali, previously spared the worst of fighting, also said that the violence and mortar fire from rebels was ‘unprecedented’.
‘The sound from the fighting and the gunfire has been non-stop. Everyone is terrified. I have never heard anything like this before,’ said a 30-year-old resident of Sulimaniyeh who only identified himself as Ziad.
The ‘rebels’ declared an all-out assault for the northern city on Thursday.
Clashes were also ongoing in Sakhur in the east, where army shelling attacks would be followed by five minutes of machinegun fire and a brief stop, then the shelling would begin again.
The sky in Aleppo has been clouded with dust and smoke since Thursday night until the morning because of the intense bombing and shelling.
Syrian RTV has reported that several of the ‘rebel’ leders have been killed in the fierce fighting.
l Participants in the conference of the opposition parties and forces for peaceful democratic change, which kicked off on Wednesday with the participation of 35 parties, bodies and trends, called for a national comprehensive dialogue that does not exclude anyone from the table.
The official spokesperson for the Popular Front for Change and Liberation, Adel N’eiseh, considered that in the end everyone must sit at the negotiating table, stressing that it is the Syrians themselves who should prepare the negotiating table and set its goals.
‘We have started talking of an outlet out of our belief . . . that in there won’t be a winner except the homeland . . . Our duty is to spare time and extend the dialogue table,’ said N’eiseh.
He called for seizing the opportunity to launch ‘a comprehensive national dialogue that doesn’t exclude anyone and extends the table to whoever wants to offer something for the homeland.’
‘As loud as the boom of their bombs reaches, the sound of the public anger at this behaviour will be louder,’ said N’eiseh, considering that if the bombing which took place in Damascus before the date set for the conference was a message, ‘then the answer is the convening of the conference.’
Addressing the conference, the Russian Ambassador in Damascus, Azamat Rakhmetovich Lmukhametov, stressed the necessity of finding solutions to the crisis in Syria through peaceful political means on the ground of comprehensive dialogue without preconditions and taking tangible steps towards achieving the national reconciliation.
For his part, Qadri Jamil, Secretary of the Popular Will Party, said that the common denominator among the participants in the conference is the will in a peaceful, democratic change.
‘History will not be merciful towards those who call for a foreign intervention . . . those who don’t want dialogue are the powers of corruption which seek, through exaggerated violence, to cover their practices,’ Jamil added.
Other representatives of different parties in Syria underlined that they don’t accept to kill the State and the Syrian society, destroy railways and the public institutions.
The parties considered that the twin terrorist explosions which took place near the General Staff are against the opposition and the State alike.
They called for supporting everyone who has the will in the peaceful, democratic change to come out of the crisis and dismiss the logic of abolishment.
The Russian Ambassador called for unifying efforts to find a peaceful outlet from the crisis that is based on rejecting foreign interference, including funding, arming and harbouring the armed groups, and halting violence immediately by all sides.
He said Russia attaches great importance to the mission of the UN envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, stressing the importance of Kofi Annan’s six-point plan and the Geneva statement in finding a solution to the crisis in Syria.
The Russian Ambassador highlighted the important role of the national internal opposition and the unified political forces in trying to find a coalition for peaceful change that stands against foreign interference and calls for immediate halt of violence and support to constructive dialogue with the government.
He voiced confidence that this approach aimed at unifying the common efforts of the national internal opposition would help make of the opposition a real influential force that is able to find a frame for dialogue with the government and get to solving the issues to prevent the country from slipping to a dangerous edge.
For his part, Sing Yao condemned in a speech in the name of the Chinese Embassy in Damascus the two terrorist bombings which took place in Damascus, stressing that China’s stance towards the crisis in Syria is objective, just and responsible and based on protecting the main interests of the Syrian people.
The Iranian ambassador in Damascus, Mohammad-Reza Sheibani said that dialogue is the best way to reach the aspired-to goal in solving the crisis in Syria that was concocted by enemies of the Syrian people to weaken the Syrian state for being a fundamental part of the axis of resistance.
He reiterated his country’s respect for the demands of the Syrian people and the importance of pushing ahead with reforms.
‘The Syrian people are the only authority who are entitled to determine their own future, and political solution and comprehensive dialogue is the sole way to reach the hoped-for reforms,’ the Iranian ambassador said, adding ‘Iran has opposed all foreign interference in the Syrian affairs, especially military interference, because democracy can never achieved at gunpoint.’
He added that Iran has categorically opposed bloodshed and violence, adding that it believes that violence stokes the crisis and compound problems.
‘Hence, I’d like to express condemnation of the terrorist attacks which hit Damascus this morning and spilled the blood of the innocents.’
The Iranian ambassador added, ‘Iran denounces the irresponsible interference of some countries through offering logistical help to irresponsible groups in Syria,’ reiterating his country’s call for respecting and preserving Syria’s unity.
The Iranian ambassador saw that the meeting constitutes a positive step to stop undermining Syria, affirming that the Syrian government’s agreement to organizing such conferences proves its well-intentioned willingness to achieve national reconciliation.
