Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Thursday that his country’s position on Syria would not shift under pressure despite the crisis likely topping the agenda during his upcoming visits to Berlin and Paris, AFP reported."Russia's position is well-known. It is balanced and consistent and completely logical," Interfax quoted Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying.
"So it is hardly appropriate to talk about this position changing under someone's pressure."
Peskov said Russia's refusal to back further action against the regime after last week's Houla massacre and other attacks on civilians was based on an approach "completely free of emotions, which are hardly appropriate here."
Moscow is also coming under growing pressure from Washington to at least back broader financial sanctions against its Soviet-era ally.
Putin is expected to face a grilling from both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on Friday during his first foreign tour since being sworn in for a third Kremlin term.
The White House on Wednesday accused Russia and fellow Syrian sanctions opponent China of being on "the wrong side of history" and dispatched the US Treasury's financial intelligence chief to Moscow for further talks.
For her part, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hurried on Thursday to criticize Russia's resistance to UN action on Syria, warning that its policy could contribute to a civil war.
The Russians "are telling me they don't want to see a civil war. I have been telling them their policy is going help to contribute to a civil war," she told a mainly student audience on a visit to Copenhagen.
"We have to bring the Russians on board because the dangers we face are terrible," said Clinton, who is in Denmark on the first leg of a Scandinavian tour.
"The continued slaughter of innocent people, both by the military and by militias supported by the government and increasingly by the opposition... could morph into a civil war in a country that would be riven by sectarian divides, which then could morph into a proxy war in the region.”
Clinton remarks coincided with UN chief Ban Ki-moon statements Thursday, warning of 'catastrophic civil war' in Syria after the Houla tragedy.
"The massacres of the sort seen last weekend could plunge Syria into a catastrophic civil war, a civil war from which the country would never recover," he told an Istanbul forum of the UN-led Alliance of Civilizations initiative.
The UN chief demanded that the Damascus regime honor its commitment to a peace plan drawn up by international mediator Kofi Annan, and that "the Syrian government act on its responsibilities to its people."
An international team led by Annan visited Syria Tuesday and called for "concrete gestures" from Damascus on halting the violence.
In Istanbul, Ban said: "Annan has expressed his concerns that we may have reached a tipping point in Syria."
US Senators Call for Arming Syrian Opposition
"It is time to act. It is time to give the Syrian opposition the weapons in order to defend themselves," McCain said, while Lieberman stated that the situation in Syria "will not get better until the rest of the world at least gives the arms" to the Syrian rebels.
In a press conference in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, the two US senators made the remarks blaming the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the deadly clashes between Syrian forces and armed groups in the western town of al-Houla on May 25.According to Head of the UN observer mission in Syria Major General Robert Mood, UN observers in Houla estimated 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women.
The UN Security Council condemned the violence in Houla during an emergency meeting on May 27, saying the clashes "involved a series of government artillery and tank shelling on a residential neighborhood."
However, Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja'afari censured the "tsunami of lies" by some members of the Security Council and said the Syrian forces were not to blame for the violence.
The comments by McCain and Lieberman come on the same day when the so-called Free Syrian Army said the Damascus government had a "deadline by Friday midday" to end the turmoil.
Source: Press TV, edited by moqawama.org
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