Russia not to discuss Assad fate with US
2012-12-09 10:08 PM
MOSCOW: Russian and US diplomats are meeting today with UN peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for more talks on the civil war in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that the Americans were wrong to see Moscow as softening its position.

Russia agreed to take part in the talks in Geneva, he said, on the condition there would be no demand for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down. “We are not conducting any negotiations on the fate of Assad,” Lavrov said. “All attempts to portray things differently are unscrupulous, even for diplomats of those countries which are known to try to distort the facts in their favor.”

Lavrov met last week with Brahimi and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Dublin. Afterward, Clinton said the US and Russia were committed to get both sides in the Syrian conflict to talk about a political transition. Clinton stressed that the US would contin

[link to thehimalayantimes.com]