Russia labels Paris-hosted meeting on Syria ‘one-sided’

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russia will not take part in an “international ministerial meeting on Syria" to be held in Paris on Thursday, April 19, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said, according to RIA Novosti.

“I can confirm that we have received an invitation to this event,” Lukashevich said in a statement published on the Foreign Ministry website. “We have also sent our reply to the French side. It is negative.”

The meeting organizers “apparently had low expectations” Russia would attend, he added, which is why they sent their invitation to Moscow “less than 48 hours” before the event.

Foreign ministers from 15 countries, including the United States, Germany, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are expected to attend the Paris meeting, which was initiated by the French Foreign Ministry.

Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister, said the meeting was designed to “convey a message of firmness to Damascus,” as well to demonstrate support for the UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan for Syria.

When asked if Russia was invited to Thursday's meeting in Paris, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said the meeting “isn't a substitute for the work of the Security Council and as such it wouldn't be appropriate to invite the members of this Council.”

Lukashevich said “Russia’s approach to this kind of meeting is well-known.” The Paris event, he said, is “one-sided,” just as recent meetings of the so-called Friends of Syria group of countries in Tunisia and Turkey, because no representatives of the Syrian government have been invited.

“This meeting is apparently aimed not at looking for the basis to launch inter-Syrian dialogue, but just opposite, at deepening the divisions between the opposition and Damascus by encouraging the international isolation of the latter,” he said.

Lukashevich called on the international community to stick to the Annan Plan, which has been backed by all members of the United Nations Security Council, rather than engage in “destructive political amateurship.”