"Nothing new" in Annan article on Syria - Russian lawmaker
MOSCOW. Aug 3 (Interfax) - A senior member of the International Affairs Committee of Russia's State Duma said on Friday that "there is nothing new" in the farewell article in British daily Financial Times by Kofi Annan, who resigned on Thursday as UN and Arab League envoy on Syria.
Annan "is once again telling the two sides what they should do: Russia, China and Iran should, in his opinion, persuade the Syrian leadership to hand over power to the opposition, while the United States and some other Western and Middle East countries should press the Syrian opposition to start a dialogue with official authority," Leonid Kalashnikov, deputy chairman of the committee, told Interfax.
Kalashnikov expressed approval of the Kremlin's consistent support of the Syrian government. "Good or bad, it's legitimate official authority, and there is no other authority in that Middle East country - the opposition is motley, contradictory, and its numbers are small as well, because it hasn't been able to achieve its goals for a year," he said.
The reason why the opposition has remained active for so long is that "the West is encouraging all those motley radical groups, supplying them with weapons for fighting lawful authority."
"The situation in the greater Middle East is increasingly explosive," Kalashnikov said, blaming the United States, Britain, France and some Arab states for this.