Russia is watching situation in Syria with growing alarm - Lavrov

MOSCOW, May 25. /TASS/. Russia is watching the situation in Syria and other countries of the region with growing alarm, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mamedyarov on Monday. "We are viewing the situation in Syria, and not only in Syria with growing alarm," Lavrov said. "The militants of the so-called Islamic State have already proclaimed a so-called Caliphate in a considerable territory of Syria and Iraq." "The presence of the Islamic State has already manifested itself in other countries, too, such as Lebanon and Libya," Lavrov said, adding that other radical groups were stepping up their activities, too. For instance, al-Qaeda, in the Arabian Peninsula. "As far as Syria is concerned, we will be insisting on the early restart of the political process," Lavrov said. "We have done a great deal in order to prepare grounds for that. We have held two meetings in Moscow for representatives of different groups of the Syrian opposition and the Syrian government. The second such meeting approved of the Moscow Platform, which contains about a dozen basic principles to which all participants - the opposition and Syrian government officials agreed." Lavrov said Russia would be actively using the potential accumulated at the meetings in Moscow in the course of the contacts in which we are involved, as well as other countries under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura." These contacts, he said, were being carried out in the form of consultations with various Syrian parties and with outside actors in Geneva. The consultations are to produce an official proposal for resuming the full-scale negotiating process. "The most important thing is to avoid a repetition of the mistakes of the past, when the range of negotiators was in fact confined to representatives of one group called the National Coalition, which is far from representing Syria’s whole opposition," Lavrov said. Read more