Russia's foreign minister said Saturday that Syrian President Bashar Assad has no intention of stepping down and it would be impossible to try to persuade him otherwise.
After a meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi, theU.N.'s
envoy for the Syrian crisis, Lavrov also said that the Syrian opposition risks
sacrificing many more lives if it continues to insist on Assad leaving office
as a precondition for holding talks on Syria's future.
Assad "has repeatedly said publicly and privately,
including in his meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi in Damascus not long ago, that he
does not intend to leave for anywhere, that he will stay to the end in his
post, that he will, as he expressed it, defend the Syrian people, Syrian
sovereignty and so forth," Lavrov said. "There's no possibility to
change this position."
Brahimi warned that the country's civil war could plunge
the entire region into chaos by sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into
neighboring nations, but his talks in Moscow produced no sign of progress
toward settling the crisis.
Brahimi and Lavrov both said after their meeting that the
21-month-old Syrian conflict can only be settled through talks, while admitting
that the parties in the conflict have shown no desire for compromise. Neither
official hinted at a possible solution that would persuade the Syrian
government and the opposition to agree to a ceasefire and sit down for talks
about a political transition.
Brahimi, who arrived in Moscow on a one-day trip
following his talks in Damascus with Assad this week, voiced concern about the
escalation of the conflict, which he said is becoming "more and more
sectarian."