Putin tempers support for Assad

Russian Prime Minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin has declined to express unequivocal support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, telling the foreign press that Russia has no special relationship with the Assad regime, Britain’s The Times daily reported on Friday. “We don’t have a special relationship with Syria. We only have interests in seeing the conflict being resolved,” Putin said. “It is up to the Syrians to decide who should run their country,” Putin said. Putin had an interview with the editors-in-chief of six foreign newspapers on Friday, including The Times, France’s Le Monde, Italy’s La Repubblica, Germany’s Handelsblatt, Canada’s The Globe and Mail and Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper in his Novo-Ogaryovo residence near Moscow. “In order to solve this problem, you can not stand on one side of an armed conflict or on the side of one of the warring parties, sorry for the tautology. We need to look at the interests of both, get them to sit down, get them to cease fire,” Putin said. Russia, China and Cuba on Thursday voted against a UN Human Rights Council resolution calling on Syria to immediately end violence against civilians and grant humanitarian organizations access to the country. The results of the vote, posted on the council’s website, show that 37 countries voted for the resolution and three nations abstained. The Syrian delegation left the Human Rights Council discussions on Tuesday in protest against the “unfriendly” resolution. Syria also said it refuses to acknowledge the meeting and the resolution as legitimate. Both Western and Arab nations increased pressure on Assad’s regime, calling for an immediate end to bloodshed in Syria, which according to Syrian rights groups has claimed more than 7,000 lives since the uprising against the current authorities began 11 months ago.