Russia will not make excuses to U.S. for arms deliveries to Syria - Lavrov
ST. PETERSBURG. June 22 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he will not make excuses for the deliveries of helicopters repaired in Russia to Syria in talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"I am not going to raise this issue. If my colleague shows interest in it I will say that we are not going to make excuses," he said on Rossiya-24 television.
"We cannot be blamed [for delivering weapons to Syria] because we are not violating anything - international law, or UN Security Council resolutions, or our national law on export control which is one of the tightest in the world," the Russian foreign minister said.
Russia supplies weapons to Syria under contracts that are not secret and that envision the purchase of primarily defensive Russian air-defense weapons, which can be needed only in the event of external aggression, he said.
On Russian helicopters, he said that a Russian-Syrian contract was signed in 2008 to repair Soviet-made helicopters. After repairs these disassembled helicopters were delivered back to Syria, where they were to be assembled in three months' time as a minimum," Lavrov said.
"It is dishonest to claim that we have just sold something new, and that this something new is being used against peaceful demonstrators," he said.
"Therefore, I am prepared to discuss this with my colleagues, alongside other issues, because we, too, have much to ask the Americans," the Russian foreign minister said.