Russia 'stands by' Syria

Russia to sell Arms for Syria & Veto the UNSC

D-P news

2 February, 2012

RUSSIAN Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov says Moscow will not stop selling weapons to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, as Moscow stands by its longtime ally despite mounting international condemnation over the Syrian regime's bloody crackdown on a 10-month-old uprising. 

"As of today there are no restrictions on our delivery of weapons," he told journalists in Russia, according to the country's state news agencies. "We must fulfill our obligations and this is what we are doing." 

Antonov's remarks come amid deadlocked United Nations Security Council talks on a Western- and Arab League-backed resolution aimed at halting Assad's deadly crackdown against antigovernment demonstrators.

Russia has said it opposes the UN Security Council text, which calls for President al-Assad to step down. Last month, Russia reportedly signed a $550-million deal to sell combat jets to Syria. 

Press reports also quoted U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that she will discuss the issue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Munich Security Conference this weekend. 

On Wednesday, Russia said it would veto any U.N. resolution on Syria that it finds unacceptable, after demanding any measure rule out military intervention to halt the bloodshed touched off by protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule. 

"If the text will be unacceptable for us we will vote against it, of course," Russian U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin told reporters in Moscow via a video-link from New York. 

"If it is a text that we consider erroneous, that will lead to a worsening of the crisis, we will not allow it to be passed. That is unequivocal," he said. 

Churkin remarks came hours after Russia's envoy to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, said there was no chance the Western-Arab draft text could be accepted unless it expressly rejected armed intervention. 

Wiam Wahhab, a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician, met Tuesday with President al-Assad in Damascus. "I found him relaxed and sure. He is confident in the Russian position," Wahhab told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar in an interview published Thursday. 

Wahhab said Assad told him he will end the uprising, because "the cost of chaos is much worse than the cost of decisiveness." 

Jose Luis Diaz, Amnesty International's UN representative, has criticized Moscow for blocking a binding UN resolution. 

Noting massive Syrian weapons purchases from Moscow, Diaz said: "Russia bears a heavy responsibility for allowing the brutal crackdown on legitimate dissent in Syria to continue unchecked." 

Russian state-run arms exporter Rosoboroneksport has reported sales of $11 billion in 2011, a rise of more than $2 billion from the previous year. 

Anatoly Isaikin, general director of Rosoboroneksport, said the jump came despite billions in lost sales as a result of a UN arms embargo on Libya that targeted then-leader Muammar Qaddafi's regime. 

Isaikin said Russia's main arms consumers include India, Venezuela, and Asia-Pacific states, and that air-defense technology accounted for just over half of all exports. 

Syria's government is also a major purchaser of Russian-made arms. Rosoboronexport currently provides arms to 57 countries worldwide. 

Russia is the world's second-biggest arms exporter after the United States