Russia sees Al-Qaeda hand in Syria

Russia today accused Al-Qaeda of being behind the brutal recent bombings in Syria and warned of a protracted and increasingly bloody conflict in which neither side gained the upper hand, Hurriyet Daily News reported.
 
Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov painted a bleak picture of Syria's future one month after Bashar al-Assad's government signed up to international envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan.
 
Gatilov said the standoff had reached a military "balance" that would be hard to break unless Western and Arab nations took a harder line with opposition groups with which they had links.
 
But he added that current foreign assistance to fighters required Russia not to leave its traditional ally defenceless and to continue supplying Assad's army with certain "defensive" arms.
 
"It is very sad to see very powerful foreign support for the opposition -- both financial and military. This foreign support only emboldens the diehard opposition, prompting them to continue their terrorist activity," Gatilov said.
 
"For us it is absolutely clear that terrorist groups are behind this -- Al-Qaeda and those groups that work with Al-Qaeda," he added in reference to the deadly wave of bombings that have recently struck Syria's biggest cities.
 
Twin suicide bombings in Damascus last week killed 55 people and wounded 372 outside a government security building.
 
An Islamist group that had been unknown before the Syrian revolt released a video on Saturday claiming responsibility for the attack.
 
But the head of the dissident Free Syrian Army on Sunday accused Assad's powerful air force intelligence of having links to Al-Qaeda it was using to discredit rebel groups.
 
Analysts see the potential entry of Al-Qaeda on either side of the standoff as a hugely troubling development that would raise the spectre of violence like that endured after the US invasion of Iraq.