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Syria Situation Causes â€œPropaganda Warâ€ - Russia

14 August 2012 22:24 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The situation in Syria is causing a propaganda war, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday after a Saudi newspaper claimed a Russian diplomat had said in an interview that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is ready to resign, APA reports quoting RÄ°A Novosti.

â€œWe would like to emphasize that the report [in the newspaper] is not true, and the Russian representative has not given any such interview,â€ Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariya Zakharova said.

A number of western media earlier cited the Al Watan newspaperâ€™s report. The Saudi publication quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in reported speech as saying that Assadâ€™s brother Maher lost his legs in a Damascus explosion in July and that the president may soon resign.

â€œRegretfully, we have to state that the situation in Syria is becoming an object of a propaganda war, some of whose participants do not stop short of using dirty tricks,â€ Zakharova said.

â€œIt is no secret either that some media, which from the very start covered events in Syria tendentiouslyâ€¦ distort Russiaâ€™s principled position and sometimes even resort to open misinformation,â€ she said.

A few chief editors have changed at Al Watan in the past year. Some experts describe the publication as a tabloid.

The Syrian conflict has claimed between 14,000 and 20,000 lives since March 2011, according to estimates by various opposition groups and the UN. The West is pushing for Assadâ€™s ouster, while Russia and China are trying to prevent outside interference in the country, claiming the Assad regime and the opposition are both to blame for the bloodshed.