Pause in Aleppo matches de Mistura's proposal - Russian Foreign Ministry
MOSCOW. Oct 18 (Interfax) - Moscow's announcement of an eight-hour pause in Aleppo on Thursday, October 20, is directly linked with the implementation of UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura's initiative on militants' withdrawal from Aleppo, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
"The eight-hour pause matches the known proposal of Special Envoy de Mistura," he told reporters in Moscow.
The announced eight-hour humanitarian pause "is a reflection of Moscow's extremely responsible attitude to the task of ensuring humanitarian access," the deputy minister said.
Moscow sees the value of de Mistura's initiative on the withdrawal of militants from eastern Aleppo and is not refusing to work within the UN to help secure a settlement in Syria, Ryabkov said.
In particular, Russia views New Zealand's draft resolution on Syria as "quite interesting," he said.
"But the main difficulty is that American colleagues are not ready to overcome their own dogmas that they formulated for themselves and are trying to impose them on others. One of these dogmas is rejection of fully-fledged military cooperation with Russia and an attempt to present this matter in such a way that the bilateral dialogue with Russia on Syria is also scaled down," he said.