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Medvedev says Syria signals must target both sides

09 September 2011 03:47 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. President Dmitry Medvedev signaled in remarks published on Friday that Russia is ready to discuss a possible U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria but will not support a document that targets only the government for censure, APA reports quoting todayszaman.com webpage.

Russia, which Medvedev described as a "great friend" of Syria, has resisted Western efforts to impose U.N. sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad for his government’s six-month-old crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

"We are ready to support different approaches, but they must not be based on one-sided condemnations of the actions ... of the government and President Assad," Medvedev said in the remarks, to Euronews television.

"They must send a firm signal to all conflicting sides that they need to sit down at the negotiations table, they need to agree and stop the bloodshed," he said.

The interview was released ahead of a flurry of Russian diplomacy involving Syria. Medvedev’s special envoy Mikhail Margelov was to meet Syrian opposition representatives on Friday and talks with an adviser to Assad are set for Monday.

Medvedev’s remarks suggested Moscow would try to nudge the Syrian sides toward compromise and press Western nations to tone down a draft resolution calling for sanctions against Assad and some of his relatives and associates.

After Western nations circulated the draft late last month, Russia proposed a rival resolution that did not call for sanctions or any punitive measures.

It reiterated Russia’s public calls for the Syrian authorities to speed up promised reforms and for the opposition to engage in dialogue with the government.

Margelov said on Thursday that Russia was holding out against the Western draft in the hope that it would win support for its own proposal.

In the interview, Medvedev said Russia is concerned about "the disproportionate use of force and the large number of victims" and that he had made that clear to Assad in private discussions.

"But I believe that those resolutions that we adopt to send such a tough message ... to the Syrian leadership should be addressed to both sides, because the situation there is not sterile.

"Those who air anti-government slogans are not simply supporters of refined European democracy, they are different people. Some of them, frankly, are extremists, some could even be called terrorists," he said.

Syrian authorities blame what they describe as terrorists for the bloodshed and say hundreds of members of the security forces are among the dead. The United Nations says more than 2,200 civilians have been killed since the clampdown began in March.