MONTREUX, January 22. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia urges the Geneva 2 participants to help the Syrian government and the opposition to pool efforts in combating terrorism, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at the Geneva 2 international conference on Syria here on Wednesday.

"We're calling upon all the participants in the conference to do everything to help the Syrian government and the opposition to pool efforts with the objective of eradicating terrorism; I remind that this is what the G8 leaders called for in their final communiqué of the Lough Erne summit last June," he said.

"The threat of Syria's turning into a hotbed of international terrorism is the most serious problem," the minister noted. "Extremists, who came there from all over the world, are wreaking the havoc, destroying cultural and demographic patterns that have been forming for centuries and creating an atmosphere of intolerance, absolutely alien to Syria.