Posted on 01/29/2013 7:01:52 AM PST by bert
Prime Minister Medvedev says Syrian president's chances of keeping power are getting "smaller and smaller" as war rages
Russia's prime minister has said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had made a "grave," and possibly "fatal" mistake by delaying political reforms and not speaking to members of the country's oppositon sooner.
"[Assad] should have done everything much faster, attracting part of the moderate opposition, which was ready to sit at the table with him, to his side," Dmitry Medvedev said according to the transcript of an interview with CNN released by his office on Sunday.
"This was his grave mistake, and possibly a fatal one," Medvedev said.
Medvedev’s comments are some of the harshest from Syria’s most important ally during the last two years of a civil war that began as an uprising against Assad’s rule.
Medvedev also said that Assad is losing his grip on power as the war, which has already cost more than 60,000 lives, continues.
"I think that with every day, every week and every month the chances of his preservation are getting smaller and smaller," Medvedev was quoted as saying.
"But I repeat, again, this must be decided by the Syrian people. Not Russia, not the United States, not any other country.”
In the remarks, made to the US-based TV network on the sidelines of the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Medvedev also placed equal blame for the escalation of the civil war on "the leadership of the country and the irreconcilable opposition".
(Excerpt) Read more at aljazeera.com ...
Assad may fall, but Iran will never allow it fall outside of its control. Hezbollah will make sure of that.
Iran is looking very pretty itself, these days.
Prime Minister Medvedev... has said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had made a "grave," and possibly "fatal" mistake by delaying political reforms and not speaking to members of the country's oppositon sooner. "[Assad] should have done everything much faster, attracting part of the moderate opposition, which was ready to sit at the table with him, to his side," Dmitry Medvedev said according to the transcript of an interview with CNN released by his office on Sunday. "This was his grave mistake, and possibly a fatal one," Medvedev said.Assad's grave mistake was listening to the Russian regime, which rejected negotiations from the beginning (claiming that ALL dissenters were somehow foreign agents, and claiming that some imaginary folks needed to come forward; it was a tactic designed to divide the opposition) and stiffened Assad's resolve with the influx of weapons, ammo, troops, and naval vessels. Now the weasel Medvedev is trying to save face by trying to lie his way out of this debacle, and the best part is, it isn't going to work.
Well, you have a good point here but history proved many times that talks with an opposition are useless in this part of the world. Under any conditions there will be islamic radicals holding an upper hand.
I think Russians were right in their earlier policy, now Medvedev (i he really said it) is simply caving for a possibility to find any common ground with future Syrian government.
He’s not changing a word of his original policy (which was, after all, Puppetmaster Putin’s policy), just trying to deny that Russia was ever in favor of it, while simultaneously AGAIN denying the legitimacy of the opposition.
This “Assad’s chances” talk is nothing that hadn’t already been said before by Russian gov’t sources.
And no, the Russians were not and are not right about this — but they will be left holding the bag, and we get to watch. The end game for them is to try to extricate themselves from a completely hostile Middle East, having lost their last foothold. They probably won’t prove to be nimble enough to do so.
If you don’t like their position on Arab Spring what is your favorable (and realistic!) approach?
How it has to be handled? Just don’t tell “let it to the sand people”. It is a kind of solution which led to 9/11 at the time.
Clinton brought the US around to 9/11 by not finishing the job on bin Laden. Inaction falls under “silence implies consent”.
On 9/11, the cheering crowds of the Arab world (and the Holocaust deniers and other skinheads here in the US) knew no sectarian divide. The entire Moslem world should have ceased to exist on 9/12.
We have one choice to prevent future 9/11s, and it isn’t going to come about — and that is, obliterate Islam. Until there are no more muzzies (or at least, no more who were armed by and trained in terrorist training camps set up by our enemy when they were known as the USSR).
The Russian position is the same as it always has been — arm the enemies of the United States, be they Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Syria...
Last time I’ve check it wasn’t red bastards who trained and supplied bin Laden. It was another nation propping islamist nut job againt Soviet backed secular regime simply to flip a bird in front of Russians.
How could Clinton “finish with bin Laden”. He was an ally just a few years before Clinton took office and there were no good reason to start a war at the time. Bin laden wasn’t even considered a threat in earlier to mid 90s.
Obliterating islam is a good plan but how could you achieve this? IMHO, secular dictators like Q-duffy, Saddam and Assad were extremely instrumental in keeping islamists in closet and obliterating their agenda. For that reason all of the above were hated by powerful Saudi lobby.
No other options against islam yet.
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