West trying to persuade Russia to grant asylum to Assad; Moscow refusing - newspaper
MOSCOW. July 4 (Interfax) - Western countries, primarily the U.S., are taking active steps to persuade Russia to grant political asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but Moscow is so far refusing to do so, Kommersant reported on Wednesday citing a Russian diplomatic source.
This absolutely disagrees with "information that has lately been circulated in Western media outlets that Russia has decided to grant political asylum to Bashar Assad and that he has transferred nearly all of his savings to Russia."
"We have no plans to collect Assad," the source told Kommersant.
Another diplomatic source from an unnamed Western country neither confirmed nor denied the information about this proposal supposedly made to Moscow in an interview with Kommersant.
The theme of the Syrian leader's fate is not only coming to the foreground in the standoff in Syria but could become a serious irritant in relations between Russia and the West, the newspaper says.
In fact, Russia and the West's approaches to the Assad problem are not that radically different as one might conclude from the parties' official statements, it says.
