Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has spoken out against an embargo on weapons for Syria and urged the Libyan experience to be taken into account, RIA Novosti reports.
The minister says such an embargo would be unjust, because in Libya it worked only against the army, while the opposition was receiving arms from France and Qatar.
Lavrov believes that the crisis in Syria may be resolved the way it was in Yemen. The negotiations in Yemen lasted for months, proposed by the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (CCASG). Patience and persistence allowed the situation to stabilize.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed a plan in Riyadh for resolving the crisis with the mediation of the CCASG. Power was handed to the vice-president and Saleh received immunity from prosecution. Lavrov believes that an ultimatum from some states, including the League of Arab States, would not resolve the situation.
600 volunteers from Libya arrived in Syria through Turkey to join the Syrian opposition and fight President Bashar Assad. They left Libya after a statement by the leader of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, on support for Syrian rebels.
Earlier reports said that the Syrian opposition and the new Libyan authorities held secret negotiations in Istanbul and Tripoli in October, where they discussed shipments of weapons, financial support and sending of volunteers.
Libya has been the first state to officially recognize the Syrian National Council, a union of opposition movements, as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
