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During an interview with RT international news channel, broadcast yesterday, Putin said some Western nations, by funding extremists in a bid to topple the Syrian government, could hurt themselves in the end without realising their selfish goals.
“Today, some want to use militants from Al Qaida or some other organisations with equally radical views to accomplish their goals in Syria,” Putin said, adding such a policy was shortsighted and would lead to dire consequences.
Putin said the US had once backed rebel movements in Afghanistan and thus given rise to Al-Qaeda, “which later backfired on the United States itself.”
Putin also rejected Western criticism of Moscow’s refusal to support draft UN sanctions against the Syrian authorities and suggestions Russia could change its stance.
Russia would not revise its stance, but Western counterparts should alter their positions, Putin said.
Recent history had proved “quite a few of our counterparts’ initiatives have not played out the way they were intended to”, he said.
Meanwhile, Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota Wednesday criticised the Middle East Quartet of failing to negotiate a truce on the Syria crisis.
The Quartet is composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
“The Quartet has been ineffective. But it is not enough to denounce the ineffectiveness. We have to make efforts,” Patriota said at a hearing of Brazil’s congressional Foreign Relations Committee.
He emphasised that the conflict in Syria has lasted 18 months and the violence is spiralling. “In Syria we are witnessing a civil war. The Red Cross has said there are 25 000 dead and 250 000 injured,” Patriota said.
Patriota said his country was closely following the political upheavals in the Middle East, supporting the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and offering aid to people with dual Brazilian and Syrian citizenship.
Patriota recently talked with Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League joint special representative on
Syria, defending Brahimi’s predecessor Kofi Annan’s peace plan and calling for an immediate ceasefire.
He also announced that Egypt’s new president Mohammed Morsi is to visit Brazil on 28 September.
Brazil is the first Latin American country Morsi will visit since taking office last month.Patriota lauded Morsi as “a leader with a new vision of Egypt’s redemocratisation process”.
In another development, France has started providing direct aid and money to rebel-controlled areas of Syria and is even considering supplying anti-aircraft weapons to the opposition, a diplomatic source has said.
The aid began being supplied last Friday, to five local authorities in so called “liberated zones” located in three provinces – Deir alZor, Aleppo and Idlib, the source said on condition of anonymity.
Last week, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius promised that such aid was in the pipeline.
“In zones where the regime has lost control, such as Tal Rifaat (40 km north of Aleppo), which has been free five months, local revolutionary councils have been set up to help the population and put in place an administration for these towns so as to avoid chaos like in Iraq when the regime pulls back,” the source said.
With pressure mounting and a threat of foreign intervention looming, France — Syria’s former colonial ruler — is considering supporting the rebels with artillery. The diplomatic source said opposition forces had asked for anti-aircraft weapons. “It’s a subject that we are working on seriously, but which has serious and complicated implications. We aren’t neglecting it.”
The source did not specify how aid was provided, or name the cities where the aid went. He did however state that those areas are home to a total of 700 000 people and have been under rebel control for between one and five months. — RT.
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