Russia disturbed by US plans to boost aid to Syrian rebels

Moscow is disturbed by Washington's plans to boost arms supply to the opposition in Syria as a response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by government forces, Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday. The reports make Russia think that U.S. efforts to provide due representation of the opposition at the planned conference on Syria had been skidding, the ministry's spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said. CHEMICAL WEAPONS PROOF UNCONVINCING The U.S. decision to help rebels in the so-called "liberated enclaves" has been based on the alleged use of the chemical weapons by the Syrian government forces. However, the evidence of the chemical weapons usage in Syria provided by the U.S., France and Britain was "unconvincing", said the diplomat. According to the U.S. President Barack Obama's Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs Ben Rods, the U.S. possesses information that Syrian government troops used sarin against the rebels "on insignificant scale". The U.S. has furnished Russia with proof of chemical weapons used in Syria, Lukashevich said, although a special UN expert group has repeatedly said it found no evidence that chemical weapons was used in Syria. Meanwhile, the Russian diplomat noted that situation remained worrisome because the rebels detained in Turkey and Iraq were in possession of sarin and other chemical materials. Russia's position on the issue remains unchanged that any use of chemical weapons in Syria's domestic conflict was unacceptable, he added, also mentioning a request Damascus submitted to the UN asking to investigate the use of chemical weapons near the city of Aleppo on March 19. The request was turned down by the UN Secretariat. "There is no doubt that the decisions about pumping more weapons and military equipment (into Syria) will raise the level of confrontation and violence against civilians," Lukashevich said. Referring to the attempts to establish a no-fly zone over Syria as another destabilizing factor in the region, he said "Violence in Syria has not been muted." Lukashevich reiterated Moscow's position that the only way out of the crisis is through negotiations based on the Geneva communique of June 2012. And Moscow will go on with its efforts to convene a new conference on Syria. U.S. DECISION NOT TERMINATOR OF GENEVA-TWO MEETING Local experts said the U.S. decision to supply arms to the Syrian opposition could be seen as a diplomatic game rather than serious promises. Though it seemed like an escalation in the wake of preparations for the proposed international conference on Syria, "nobody rules out the threat of force as a method of diplomatic pressure," Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the think tank Foreign and Defense Policy Council told Interfax news agency. Currently, the U.S. plan should not be seen as a terminator of the so-called Geneva-Two meeting, as preparations and negotiations for the conference are still going on. "This decision should not be over-dramatized for the time being, " he added. The Kremlin said Friday that the Syria issue will top the agenda of a planned meeting between Russian and U.S. presidents during the upcoming G8 summit. "Huge attention will be drawn to the Syria issue, especially on the background of the U.S. representatives' claims that their intelligence has information that Bashar al-Assad's regime used chemical weapons," the Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters. Moscow and Washington did not compete in Syria but sought to solve the problem "in a constructive way," Ushakov noted. However, if the U.S. would supply Syrian opposition with arms, that would not facilitate preparations for an international conference on Syria in Geneva, said the diplomat. "For the U.S. it was more important to play up the very fact of providing that information to the Russian side," he added.