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Syria crisis: Russia denies Hillary Clinton claim over helicopters
Syria crisis: Russia denies Hillary Clinton claim over helicopters
(40 minutes later)
Russia's foreign minister has rejected the US claim that Moscow is sending attack helicopters to Syria.
Russia has rebuffed US accusations that it is supplying armed helicopters to Syria as the regime of President Bashar al-Assad reported that its forces had defeated rebels in Latakia province.
Russian news agencies reported that foreign minister Sergei Lavrov denied a claim by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton that "there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria" Lavrov said during a visit to Iran that Russia is completing earlier weapons contracts with Syria exclusively for air defence systems.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, flatly denied a claim by his US counterpart Hillary Clinton that the aircraft were being delivered. Lavrov made clear that the supply of what he called "anti-air defence systems" was legitimate.
Clinton said Tuesday that the shipment "will escalate the conflict quite dramatically".
The US in turn denied Russian claims that it was arming anti-Assad rebels.
Lavrov says that Russia isn't providing Syria with weapons that can be used against peaceful demonstrators.
"We are not violating any international law in performing these contracts," Lavrov said during a visit to Iran."They (the US) are providing arms and weapons to the Syrian opposition that can be used in fighting against the Damascus government."
Russia, along with China, has shielded Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime from international sanctions over its violent crackdown on protesters in which more than 13,000 people have died, according to opposition groups.
The sharp public exchanges on Syria began on Tuesday when Clinton warned that Russian helicopters would "escalate the conflict quite dramatically".
Moscow has been a longstanding supplier of weapons to the Assad regime and Syria hosts Russia's only naval base in the Mediterranean.
Evidence is mounting that the Free Syrian Army, the opposition's main armed wing, has started receiving more and better weapons from Saudi Arabia and Qatar that are being delivered via the Turkish border. The US has been described as "co-ordinating" those efforts.
Clinton, speaking to a forum in Washington on Tuesday, also said that intelligence also indicated that the Assad regime may be about to turn its forces against Syria's largest city, Aleppo, close to the northwestern border with Turkey.
In violence on the ground the Syrian Revolution General Commission meanwhile reported 34 people killed across the country on Wednesday, mostly in shelling of Homs, Deraa and Deir ez-Zor.
"There seems to be a massing of Syrian forces around Aleppo which we've got information about over the last 24 or 48 hours. That could very well be a red line for the Turks in terms of their strategic or national interests," she said.
Britain's foreign secretary William Hague, is to discuss Syria with Lavrov in a meeting in Pakistan on Thursday and will raise Russia's role in the crisis.
State television in Syria on Wednesday said government forces have retaken control of the Haffa region near the Mediterranean coast following eight days of fierce shelling and clashes.
France's foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, meanwhile echoed a senior UN official in stating explicitly that Syria was now in a state of "civil war". Fabius also said he would call on the UN security council to make mediator Kofi Annan's Syria peace plan mandatory. Annan's six-point plan is all but dead in the absence of a ceasefire or the implementation any of its other elements.
Hundreds of rebel fighters were believed to have been holed up there and pulled out overnight after intense fighting. The rebel fighters fled the villages of Zanqufa, Dafil and Bakkas under the cover of night, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing a network of activists on the ground.
Tuesday's statement by Herve Ladsous, the UN's head of peacekeeping operations, was rejected out of hand by both the Syrian opposition and government.
State television said regime forces had "cleansed" Haffa from "armed terrorist groups" and the foreign ministry urged UN observers to head there. Syrian authorities often refer to rebels fighting to oust Assad as terrorists.
The Syrian Revolution General Commission, an opposition body, complained that Ladsous's view "does not reflect the reality and does not represent the Syrian people". The announcement, it said, "makes the killer and the victim equal and ignores all the massacres committed by the Assad regime". It also masked "the real demands of the Syrian people who are only asking for freedom and dignity".
The mountainous Haffa region is one of several areas where government forces are battling rebels for control in escalating violence. Recovering it is particularly important to the regime because the town is about 20 miles from President Bashar Assad's hometown of Kardaha in Latakia province.
There was agreement, for different reasons, from the foreign ministry in Damascus: the remarks by Ladsous, it said, "did not reflect the reality" of what it happening in Syria. That is "war against armed groups that have chosen terrorism".
Latakia is the heartland of the Alawite minority to which Assad and the ruling elite belong, although there is a mix of religious groups there.
Syrian state TV reported that government forces have retaken control of the Haffa region near the Mediterranean coast after eight days of shelling and clashes. Hundreds of FSA fighters were believed to have been holed up there and pulled out after intense fighting.
It was not clear whether UN observers in Syria would be able to reach Haffa. On Tuesday, an angry crowd hurled rocks and sticks at the observers' vehicles as they approached the area, forcing them to turn back. The observers were not hurt. Sausan Ghosheh, a spokeswoman for the observers, said they have been trying to reach Haffa since 7 June.
France on Wednesday said Syria is already in a civil war, echoing a similar statement by UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous on Tuesday.
The new French foreign minister Laurent Fabius told a news conference in Paris: "If you can't call it a civil war, then there are no words to describe it."
He added that to stop "this civil war from worsening," Assad must leave power and Syrian opposition groups must start a new government. He said he will be in personal contact with the opposition inside Syria.
Earlier, Syria's foreign ministry expressed "astonishment" over Ladsous' statement, saying it lacked objectivity, was "far from reality" and inaccurate. "Syria is not witnessing a civil war but rather an armed conflict to uproot terrorism and confront killings, kidnappings, bombings ... and other brutal acts by armed terrorist groups," the ministry said.
