MOSCOW, February 04. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia considers the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (NCSROF) taking part in inter-Syrian talks as a choice in favor of peaceful settlement over bloody conflict, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a meeting with visiting Syrian National Coalition’s leader Ahmad al-Jarba in the Russian capital on Tuesday.
The Tuesday’s meeting is “very useful to specify approaches for further promotion of Geneva peace process.”
“We consider the fact that the National Coalition’s delegation arrived in Montreux participating in the start of the international peace conference and then taking part in the first round of talks as a choice in favor of peaceful settlement over bloody conflict,” the Russian minister said.
“We are aware that there are few of those left that continue to put a stake on refusal from any dialogue aiming at a military scenario,” Russia’s foreign minister noted. “However, a step that we had taken is important. We support an approach that allowed us to launch inter-Syrian talks,” the minister added.
“For three years that Syrian crisis has been going on, and Russia has worked and continues to work with all Syrian parties without exclusion,” Lavrov said. “We believe that it is possible only this way to ensure a really comprehensive approach, understand positions of different parties and seek for Syrian dialogue to become all-embracing and reflecting the whole scope of the Syrian society, as the Geneva communiqué and UN Security Council Resolution 2118 envisaged,” he noted.
In the words of Lavrov, Russia encourages “US and European partners and regional countries to take this approach.”
“We are convinced that they should conduct dialogue with all parties to the conflict without exclusion,” he added.
“Certainly, I refer to political parties, not to terrorists,” the Russian foreign minister added.