Russia calls for patience on new Syria conference

Moscow did not want to rush into a new international conference on Syria unprepared and risk an embarrassing failure, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday. "It could be a trap to act in a hurry. On May 7 in Moscow (during a visit of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry), we agreed to initiate that conference only if very thorough preparations were made," Lavrov said in an interview published on the ministry's website. The consent of all major parties was needed to hold a successful conference, he said, adding, despite reservations over the opposition's willingness to participate without preconditions, the Syrian government had responded positively. The main opposition group said it would be ready for talks only if President Bashar al-Assad resigned, Lavrov said. "Ours and Kerry's initiative envisages the talks on the Geneva communique implementation must be started between the government and plural opposition groups," he said. Lavrov said Moscow's position was all opposition groups, both internal and external, should be present at the conference. "We are sending signals to all opposition activists," he said, adding Russia had influence on some of them while the West, Gulf countries and Turkey had influence on the others. "There must be labor sharing, where each should do its part of the common job," the minister said. All participants in the Geneva talks should participate in the new conference plus Iran and Saudi Arabia, Lavrov said. Moscow did not expect one conference to solve the Syrian crisis completely and believed it would be counter-productive to set an exact timetable in advance, he said. "It is necessary to receive a signal from the opposition. If the signal is positive, it'll be timely to think about the conference participants, its rules and so on," Lavrov said.