Moscow dismisses reports on US-Russia deal on Assad's fate
Russia has dismissed reports on an alleged agreement between Moscow and Washington on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference on Friday that rumors about the future of Assad are “dirty leaks which distort reality.”
He said such reports indicate the inability of the US government to convince its allies that the future of Syria and its leader should be decided by the Syrians.
“Our American partners cannot publicly call into question this formula that ... only the people of Syria decide all the questions about the future of Syria,” Lavrov said.
Rumors, he added, about the fate of President Assad shows “Washington's inability to force some of its allies in the region and in Europe ... to give the Syrian people a sovereign right to decide their destiny as well as who will be their leader.”
The comments by the Russian top diplomat came in response to a report in Arabic newspaper al-Hayat published on Thursday suggesting that Russia and the US had reached an understanding on the future of Syria’s peace process. The report said US Secretary of State John Kerry had told several Arab countries that at some unspecified stage of the process Assad will depart for another country.
The Kremlin denied the report, calling the speculations as untrue.
“Al-Hayat published information which does not correspond to reality,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists on Thursday.
“Russia is advantageously different from other nations because it does not discuss the issue of the self-determination of third countries either through diplomatic or other channels.”
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