Lavrov: The situation in Syria won’t allow double standards

According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the intentions of the United States to protect the armed groups of the Syrian opposition by air is fraught with mistakes that can significantly worsen the situation in the region and lead to uncontrolled developments. 

"We had meetings with US Secretary of State John Kerry and discussed the initiative of the United States that they will use the people they had trained in order to fight IS. These people will be sent to Syria in order to provide them with air defenses if IS tries to attack them. 

But then they said that if the government forces support these armed groups, in this case the American troops will attack the government forces," RIA Novosti cites him. 

"I asked if it is easier to discuss the participation of the Syrian army, these armed forces, as well as Kurdish groups. It would be nice to recruit Iraqi Kurds to the Iraqi army. But, unfortunately, America is not ready for this," Lavrov said, recalling that "there are no Americans in Syria, but they were in Afghanistan. "  

"They used drones, used the information from the intelligence, but there were plenty of cases when they "bombed weddings, bombed buses with children instead of Taliban militants and al-Qaeda.’’ 

It is easy to make mistakes in a situation where the Americans have no such presence on the ground as there was in Afghanistan. In my opinion, it is very easy to do. And frankly speaking, I warned my colleague that some fatal mistake can destabilize the situation such that no one will be able to control it," the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

However, he drew his colleague’s attention to the fact that today there is no evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad supports Islamic State. "There is a lot of superficiality, a lot of speculation. There are even attempts to portray Assad as a politician who supports IS. But there are no facts.  

Common sense shows us that this is impossible, because we cannot even admit the idea that someone cooperates with an organization which aims to seize power over large areas, not only in the Middle East and North Africa,’’ the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry said. 

Moscow insists that it is necessary to reject double standards, including reassessing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a partner in order to effectively fight the terrorist group Islamic State, the Russian Foreign Minister stated.