Syrian top diplomat in Moscow to keep Russia support

Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem was in Moscow on Tuesday for talks to persuade Russia to maintain support for the Damascus regime even as hopes for a UN-backed peace plan slipped away. Russia has been one of the very few world powers to offer some support to President Bashar al-Assad in his bloody standoff with protestors but has also backed the plan of UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to end the violence. The visit by the veteran foreign minister to Moscow coincides with a deadline under the Annan plan for the Syrian government to withdraw forces from protest cities, which so far it has shown little sign of observing. "There is the Annan plan. It contains concrete points and we fully support this plan," the Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying ahead of the talks on Monday. Muallem, who arrived in Moscow late Monday, was due to hold talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov followed by a news conference later Tuesday. Russia has repeatedly condemned the West for taking what it says is a one-sided approach in the conflict but has in recent weeks shown signs of growing exasperation with the intransigence of the Assad regime. Moscow says its position is objective and gives it unmatched influence over Damascus, although rights activists have accused Russia of giving a green light to violence that has left more than 9,000 dead according to the UN. Last week Moscow supported a UN Security Council statement calling on Syria to "urgently" move to keep Tuesday's deadline agreed with Annan to withdraw troops and weapons from protest cities. "Damascus risks losing Moscow. The failure of the Kofi Annan plan could cost Bashar al-Assad dear," said the Nezavisimaya Gazeta liberal daily. The pro-government Izvestia added: "Russian diplomats believe that the main blame for what is going on lies with the Syrian government but the violence can only be halted in a mutual way." Assad's secular regime has been able until now to count on Moscow as a friend, in a long standing alliance that goes back to warm relations between the Soviet Union and his predecessor and father Hafez al-Assad. The Russian foreign ministry made clear last week that the "development of the traditionally friendly and multi-faceted Russia-Syria relations" would be discussed at the talks. Russia has repeatedly warned the West of the dangers of openly backing the rebels against Assad, saying there is a risk of inciting a prolonged armed conflict against the government army that the opposition can never win. "Instead, there will be carnage that lasts many, many years -- mutual destruction," Lavrov said last week. Trying to position itself as a mediator in the conflict as it seeks to recover its global clout two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is this month due to also host opposition representatives. "We must leave in the past the attempts to realise schemes of one-sided, unbalanced interference in the situation whose counter-productive effects have been proved by the events of the last months," Russian media quoted foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying ahead of Tuesday's talks.