Russia's upper house speaker does not rule out attempts at overthrowing Assad

MURMANSK, October 4. /TASS/. Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko does not rule out attempts at overthrowing Syria’s President Bashar Assad and dismembering Syria under the Balkan scenario.

Matviyenko recalled the "persistent talks" Russia had been conducting to eventually succeed, at the cost of great efforts, to remove from the agenda the issue of the immediate resignation of Syria’s legitimate president.

"Assad’s resignation or forced overthrow would merely worsen the situation and ruin the state. In that case the Libyan scenario would have been repeated to the letter," she said to explain Russia’s stance.

Matviyenko voiced the certainty that the September 9 agreement, had it been implemented, "would create conditions for an early political settlement in Syria, bring to the negotiating table all parties concerned and in the course of no easy discussions allow to achieve a peace political solution."

Regrettably, said Matviyenko, the key provision of that deal - that of separation of the moderate opposition from the terrorists, failed to be implemented by the United States.

"Either the US proved reluctant or unable to do that, having lost influence on part of the groups it had heavily armed, or it was lack of coordination inside the (Barack Obama) Administration," Matviyenko speculated.

"We (Russia and the United States) have not achieved unanimity as to who should be regarded as terrorists and who should not. Possibly, this is so because the United States maintains contacts with obviously terrorist organizations for the sake of its long-hatched plans for overthrowing Bashar Assad by force," Matviyenko told the mass media. "Today one cannot exclude anything. The United States’ behavior should be evaluated realistically."

Also, she did not rule out that "somebody would like to dismember Syria under the Balkan scenario, to split Syria into several enclaves."

"This is a scenario of continued civil war that may last for many years," she warned.

At the same time Matviyenko speculated that the United States’ declaration it was suspending contacts with Russia over Syria was "the agony of an infamously outgoing Administration, whose foreign policy in the Middle East has proved utter failure," Matviyenko told the media. "The United States itself recognized that Libya and Iraq had been mistakes, but it wished a similar scenario in Syria," she said.

"Agony of ingloriously outgoing administration"

According to the top official, the United States’ decision to suspend contacts with Russia on Syria is "an agony of the ingloriously outgoing administration." 

"It looks like an agony of the ingloriously outgoing administration which has totally failed its foreign policy in the Middle East," she told journalists. "They [the United States] have admitted that Libya, Iraq was a mistake but nevertheless they wanted a similar scenario in Syria."

No Cold War

Matviyenko stressed that she does not view the current relations between Russia and the US as the Cold War.

Matviyenko called on reporters not to "whip up tensions." "The Cold War is the time when two ideological systems were against each other," the upper house speaker said.

Now there is the fight "for economic and geopolitical interests and an attempt to unilaterally get advantages and keep a dominating role as they (US) want to remain a global government and world dictator in the virtual world," she said.

However, the situation in the world is different and "therefore the relations have deteriorated as Russia is capable of asserting its economic and national interests," Matviyenko said, stressing: "And we will continue doing this."