MOSCOW, January 31 (Itar-Tass) – Statements by Hillary Clinton on Russia’s unwillingness to promote the realisation of the Geneva agreements are incorrect and biased, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday.
“We regret that it is not the first time when we heard American representatives to wrongly interpret Russia’s position on Syria,” the Russian diplomat stressed.
Moscow believes that such statements “turn everything on its head”, he added.
“It will be necessary to mention the facts, which speak for themselves: after the Geneva communique was adopted on June 30, 2012 Russia initiated this document to be approved in the U.N. Security Council by consensus. In order to discuss this decision we were proposed to convene the Action Group in New York at the level of permanent representatives. We believed that this step gave an additional impetus to the work of the external players with Damascus and the Syrian opposition in order to launch the political process, which will form interim governing structures in compliance with the Geneva agreements,” the spokesman pointed out.
“Our proposals ran into severe confrontation from the Western partners, primarily the United States. Logic suggests the question raises that anyone ‘threw monkey-wrench into’ promoting the implementation of the Geneva communique. The response is obvious,” Lukashevich said.
Moscow is convinced that now “we need urgent collective steps aimed at ceasing violence and the bloodshed immediately and searching for a compromise, which would allow us to convince the warring parties to start talks, opening the way to peace and preventing the humanitarian catastrophe”. “We hope that this work, which also involves U.N./LAS Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, will be continued. We are ready to contribute to it and urge all our partners, including Washington, to do this,” he pointed out.