Russian military says U.S preventing efforts to return Syrian refugees to their homeland
MOSCOW. Nov 14 (Interfax) - The United States is actively preventing the efforts of Moscow and Damascus to return Syrian refugees home, head of the Russian Defense Control Center Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said on Thursday.
"The United States has considerably intensified its efforts to prevent the implementation of the Russian-Syrian initiative to return Syrian citizens from the border states, including Jordan and Lebanon," Mizintsev said at a joint meeting of the interdepartmental coordination headquarters of Russia and Syria on the return of refugees.
Officials from the U.S. embassy in Amman are using NGOs controlled by them to consistently promote the idea that the internal political and socio-economic situation in Syria remains "extremely difficult" and that there are no conditions for repatriation, he said.
"The American University of Beirut held a conference on the problems of Syria refugees. During that event, representatives of international humanitarian and human rights organizations from the United States and the UK said the Syrians' living conditions in the territory of Lebanon needed to be improved, thus continuing to stimulate their assimilation abroad, whereas everything is ready for citizens' repatriation to the territory of Syria," Mizintsev said.