Lavrov: Arab League decisions on Syria are rejection of peaceful settlement

Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, considered the decisions taken by the Arab League (AL) Summit in Doha on Syria as a rejection of a peaceful settlement to its crisis. "We received the outcomes of the Arab League summit in Doha with regret and I'm saying this frankly. We see that the core of the decisions taken there is that the League has rejected the peaceful settlement in Syria," Russia Today website quoted Lavrov as saying in a press conference on Thursday. "The Arab League decisions actually annuls the Geneva Statement which calls for negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition," Lavrov added. The Russian Foreign Minister said big questions emerge regarding the mandate of Lakhdar Brahimi who was before the AL Summit a UN-Arab League envoy with a mission to activate the communications between the government and the opposition in order to find a solution accepted by the two sides. "If one of the mandate's brokers, which is the AL, announced that the 'opposition National Coalition' is the only legitimate representative and that there won't be negotiations but rather arming by those who would like to topple the regime, then I can't see how Brahimi could be considered an envoy of the AL as well as the UN," Lavrov wondered. Commenting on the AL decision allowing sending weapons to the opposition, Lavrov said "Even without discussing to what extent this decision complies with the international law, we can concluded that it aims to encourage the confrontation." Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexander Lukashevich affirmed that the UN Human rights council is still used in the political conflicts, and a clear example of this is the decisions taken against Syria and Iran. "The politicization has increased and the conflicts have escalated, the human rights are now used increasingly in one direction to impose the concepts of new liberalism which calls for boosting the shape of the life which is hostile to the society," Lukashevich said in a statement to journalists.