Russia denied on Wednesday talking with Washington about offering exile to Syria’s president, as the chief UN observer said world powers are talking too much and not doing enough to end the Syrian conflict.
Ahead of a Paris meeting of the so-called “Friends of Syria”, which supports President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 19 more people were killed in violence across the country. Moscow denied holding talks with Washington about offering Assad exile as a way out of 16 months of bloodshed, which the Britain-based Observatory says has claimed more than 16,500 lives.
“The situation with the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is not being discussed with the United States,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russia’s Interfax news agency. Earlier, Moscow’s Kommersant daily had quoted a Russian diplomat as saying Western nations led by the United States were making “active attempts” to persuade Moscow to offer a home to Assad. But the report said Moscow objected to the idea, and Ryabkov stressed that Russia rejected a foreign solution to the brutal fighting now tearing apart its closest remaining Middle East ally.
