Russian Lawmaker: Assad Must Pull Out Troops First
Syrian President Bashar Assad must take the first step toward settling his country’s yearlong conflict by pulling his forces out of cities and allowing humanitarian assistance, a senior Russian lawmaker said Thursday, in a statement that signaled a marked shift in Moscow’s stance.
The comments by Mikhail Margelov, the Kremlin-connected chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, indicated Moscow’s increasing impatience with Assad and its eagerness to raise pressure on an old ally.
“Syrian President Bashar Assad must urgently fix numerous mistakes that he has made, according to Russia’s official position,” Margelov said, according to the ITAR-Tass and RIA Novosti news agencies.
Commenting on Wednesday’s statement by the United Nations Security Council that spelled out U.N. mediator Kofi Annan’s proposals, including guaranteed humanitarian access and the pullout of government forces from Syrian cities and towns, Margelov said that Assad should now act first.
“Assad must take the first step,” Margelov was quoted as saying. “He must pull out the Syrian army from big cities. It’s also necessary to deliver humanitarian assistance to the areas affected by fighting.”
That is a departure from Russia’s previous position that both the government and opposition forces need to simultaneously withdraw from cities.
The Syrian government has insisted that the opposition should be the first to end hostilities, while the West has demanded that Assad’s military halts its offense first, followed by the opposition.
Russia, along with China, has twice shielded Assad from United Nations’ sanctions over his crackdown on an uprising in which more than 8,000 people have been killed. But Moscow also has strongly supported a plan to settle the crisis by Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general who is the joint U.N. and Arab League envoy for Syria.