Russia speaks for Syria’s unity, sovereignty - Putin

MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin said dialogue should be organized between the Syrian authorities and opposition for them to work out a compromise without interference from outside. In an interview with Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram on the eve of his visit to Egypt, Putin said "the approaches of Russia and Egypt toward the situation in Syria are close: our states speak in support of unity and sovereignty of Syria, consistently say that there is no alternative to political and diplomatic settlement." "We have similar views of priority steps to solve the Syrian crisis. This is first of all the launch of an intra-Syrian dialogue without preliminary conditions and outside interference, on the basis of the principles of the Geneva Communique of June 30, 2012," the Russian leader specified. He recalled that "Cairo is hosting meetings of the Syrian opposition designed to work out a common platform from which it could speak at talks with the Syrian government," while "Moscow recently hosted a consultative meeting of representatives of various Syrian opposition groups, civil society and official Damascus’ delegation." "The efforts of Russia and the work of Egyptian partners complement each other, aim to overcome stagnation in the political settlement of the Syrian crisis, as well as are called upon to help arrange dialogue between the Syrian government and its political opponents for them to be able to find mutually acceptable compromises and conclusions on their own, without outside pressure," Putin said. The Russian president said he had talked about that in detail with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at last year’s meeting in Sochi. "We will discuss the issue closely in Cairo now as well," he said. According to UN statistics, fighting between Syrian government troops and militants has killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions since its start in 2011. An international peace conference on Syria, dubbed Geneva-2, organized by Russia and the United States and designed to negotiate a solution to the Syrian crisis, kicked off on January 22, 2014 in Montreux, Switzerland. Its first two rounds in January and February 2014 brought no particular progress. The parties to the Syrian conflict agreed to continue their discussions. The Geneva Communique was adopted on June 30, 2012 at a conference of an "action group" on Syria in Geneva. That conference is now commonly referred to as "Geneva-1." Read more