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Actions by Syria authorities substantiate threats of new sanctions - Margelov

“It is quite possible that ranks of protesters include people, coming out for various methods of countering the ruling regime”

MOSCOW, October 30 (Itar-Tass) — Actions by Syrian authorities substantiate threats of new sanctions and isolation of the country. This opinion was expressed on Sunday the Russian president’s representative for Africa, senator Mikhail Margelov in an interview with Itar-Tass.

“Actions by the Syrian leadership – dispersal of street demonstrations with tank attacks, shelling of protesters with field-guns and machineguns – provoke concern and only aggravate the situation in the country, retarding reforms which look inevitable under the present situation,” he said.

“Employed methods give rich materials for the mass media, including those that are hostile to the present Syrian leadership, as well as for criticism of President Bashar Assad. They corroborate threats of new sanctions and isolation of the country.”

Margelov called attention to the fact that ways of quashing protest actions in Syria “make neighbours also apprehensive”. “The Arab League foreign ministers called on President Assad to stop “killings of civilians”, he stressed. “The Arab League believes at the same time that a compromise is possible between the Syrian authorities and the opposition,” the senator stressed. “This constructive viewpoint whose translation into life, would help, at least, to stop blood-shedding.”

At the same time, Margelov who met both representatives of the ruling Syrian regime and its opponents admitted that “the opposition in Syria, as is the case everywhere in the Arab world in the past months, is heterogeneous in its demands to the regime and ideals”.

“It is quite possible that ranks of protesters include people, coming out for various methods of countering the ruling regime,” he added. Despite this fact, the senator is convinced that “the arsenal of Syrian security forces has other methods of struggle against rioting, apart from haphazard shooting at crowds”.