MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. Lurking behind the 'Arab spring' are the US plans to create the so-called Greater Middle East and to impede the rise of a multipolar world in this way, the Syrian ambassador to Moscow, Riyad Haddad told a news conference on Thursday.
"The 'Arab spring' grew over into an 'Arab fire', dealt a blow to the region and left a disaster in its wake," he said. "Restoration [of the region] will take up decades now."
The Americans' drive towards materialization of their plans threatens international peace and stability, the ambassador said.
"The so-called 'new revolutionaries' are seeking to push us a whole millennium backwards, as they declare all the achievements of civilization to be the attributes of depravity the fact that threatens all countries of the world without exception," he said. "The West that declared a war on terrorist after the 9/11 managed to defeat Iraq and Libya easily but along with this it is displaying feebleness in fighting with the Islamic State. The West wants to struggle with terrorism, which it created with its own hands."
"Russia's decision to counteract terrorism facilitated the efforts to lay down the strategic groundwork for consigning the unipolar world to history," Haddad said. "The Russian leadership displayed its prudence as it adopted a correct strategy, which undermines the very foundations of terrorism."
He accused Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia of supporting the extremists.
"The airstrikes delivered by the Russian Aerospace Force are dozens of times more efficacious than the actions of the US-led coalition," Haddad said.
The concept of the Greater Middle East was put forward in the US in 2004. It envisioned amassed American economic aid to the Arab and other Moslem countries (from northwestern Africa to Afghanistan to Pakisktan) that would achieve the most sizable successes in democratization of society.
In part, Washington linked economic aid to the setting-in of pro-democracy regimes in the aforementioned countries.
Many politicians and observers in the Islamic world size up this initiative as the striving to superimpose the American model of democracy on the Islamic world, which is alien to it. They maintain the ‘Arab spring’ that swept across a range of Arab countries in the form of revolutions and wiped out their ruling regimes as a product of this policy.