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On Wednesday, Russia dismissed claims by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that it was selling attack helicopters to Syria and it accused the USA of double standards on Middle East arms deliveries. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists after talks in the Iranian capital of Tehran, “Right now, we’re completing the implementation of contracts that were signed and paid for a long time ago. All these contracts exclusively concern anti-aircraft defences. We aren’t delivering to Syria, or anywhere else, items that one could use against peaceful demonstrators. In this, we differ from the USA, which regularly delivers riot control equipment to the region, including a recent delivery to a Persian Gulf country. However, for some reason, the Americans consider this to be fine”.
On Tuesday, Clinton told a forum in Washington that Moscow’s repeated assurances that the arms it supplies to Syria couldn’t be used to attack protesters in the Middle East country were “patently untrue”. She added, without giving further details, “We’re concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria”. Clinton also warned that such supplies would “escalate the conflict quite dramatically”. Later, Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby said, “We know that the Assad régime is using helicopter gunships against their own people”. However, he also said that he had no information on a new shipment of attack helicopters from Russia to Syria.
Syria’s one of Russia’s major weapons clients, and Moscow opposed proposals for an arms embargo on Damascus, saying this would give rebel forces an unfair advantage in the conflict. Russia… along with China… has also twice vetoed UN resolutions against Damascus over what it says is a pro-rebel bias. However, Moscow fully backs UN envoy Kofi Annan’s faltering peace plan for Syria. On Tuesday, Russian military experts suggested that Moscow might be repairing earlier-supplied helicopters for Syria, rather than providing Damascus with new models. Andrei Frolov, editor of Arms Exports, said, “There were large-scale deliveries of attack helicopters to Syria in the Soviet era. The last deliveries of Russian helicopters took place at the start of the 1990s. There’s no information about new contracts for the delivery of attack helicopters. This might be a case of the repair or possible modernisation of earlier-delivered machines”. Mikhail Barabanov, the editor of Moscow Defence, said the helicopters possibly being repaired in Russia might be Soviet-era “Mi-24 or Mi-17” models.
Clinton was answering a question on the Pentagon’s purchase of Russian helicopters for the Afghan military ahead of a pull-out by US troops. US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) {Mr Cornyn is one of the most retrograde members of the Congress, a supporter of GWB-like rapacity and warmongering: editor}, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta earlier this week calling Rosoboronexport “an enabler of mass murder in Syria” and called for sanctions against the company. Pentagon spokesman George Little said Washington “understood” Cornyn’s concerns, but said the helicopters involved were the best option to allow Afghan forces to “take on their own fights inside their own country”. In late May, members of Human Rights First, a US-based advocacy group, announced that a Russian ship allegedly carrying weapons had docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, which hosts a Russian naval base.
The UN estimates that at least 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. However, on Wednesday, Syria hit out at comments by UN’s peacekeeping chief Hervé Ladsous, who said the crisis in the country had now descended into “civil war”. The Syria Foreign Ministry said in a statement that its forces were fighting armed groups responsible for “killings, kidnappings and other terrorist acts”.
13 June 2012
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20120613/174007332.html
Russia Rejects US Allegations on Arms Deliveries to Syria
Tags: Bashar al-Assad, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Human Rights First, John Cornyn, Mi-17, Mi-24, Middle East, Mil Mi-17, Mil Mi-24, Moscow, Pentagon, political commentary, politics, Russia, Russian, Sergei Lavrov, Syria, United States, US Department of Defence, US Department of State, USA
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On Wednesday, Russia dismissed claims by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that it was selling attack helicopters to Syria and it accused the USA of double standards on Middle East arms deliveries. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists after talks in the Iranian capital of Tehran, “Right now, we’re completing the implementation of contracts that were signed and paid for a long time ago. All these contracts exclusively concern anti-aircraft defences. We aren’t delivering to Syria, or anywhere else, items that one could use against peaceful demonstrators. In this, we differ from the USA, which regularly delivers riot control equipment to the region, including a recent delivery to a Persian Gulf country. However, for some reason, the Americans consider this to be fine”.
On Tuesday, Clinton told a forum in Washington that Moscow’s repeated assurances that the arms it supplies to Syria couldn’t be used to attack protesters in the Middle East country were “patently untrue”. She added, without giving further details, “We’re concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria”. Clinton also warned that such supplies would “escalate the conflict quite dramatically”. Later, Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby said, “We know that the Assad régime is using helicopter gunships against their own people”. However, he also said that he had no information on a new shipment of attack helicopters from Russia to Syria.
Syria’s one of Russia’s major weapons clients, and Moscow opposed proposals for an arms embargo on Damascus, saying this would give rebel forces an unfair advantage in the conflict. Russia… along with China… has also twice vetoed UN resolutions against Damascus over what it says is a pro-rebel bias. However, Moscow fully backs UN envoy Kofi Annan’s faltering peace plan for Syria. On Tuesday, Russian military experts suggested that Moscow might be repairing earlier-supplied helicopters for Syria, rather than providing Damascus with new models. Andrei Frolov, editor of Arms Exports, said, “There were large-scale deliveries of attack helicopters to Syria in the Soviet era. The last deliveries of Russian helicopters took place at the start of the 1990s. There’s no information about new contracts for the delivery of attack helicopters. This might be a case of the repair or possible modernisation of earlier-delivered machines”. Mikhail Barabanov, the editor of Moscow Defence, said the helicopters possibly being repaired in Russia might be Soviet-era “Mi-24 or Mi-17” models.
Clinton was answering a question on the Pentagon’s purchase of Russian helicopters for the Afghan military ahead of a pull-out by US troops. US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) {Mr Cornyn is one of the most retrograde members of the Congress, a supporter of GWB-like rapacity and warmongering: editor}, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta earlier this week calling Rosoboronexport “an enabler of mass murder in Syria” and called for sanctions against the company. Pentagon spokesman George Little said Washington “understood” Cornyn’s concerns, but said the helicopters involved were the best option to allow Afghan forces to “take on their own fights inside their own country”. In late May, members of Human Rights First, a US-based advocacy group, announced that a Russian ship allegedly carrying weapons had docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, which hosts a Russian naval base.
The UN estimates that at least 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. However, on Wednesday, Syria hit out at comments by UN’s peacekeeping chief Hervé Ladsous, who said the crisis in the country had now descended into “civil war”. The Syria Foreign Ministry said in a statement that its forces were fighting armed groups responsible for “killings, kidnappings and other terrorist acts”.
13 June 2012
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20120613/174007332.html