China opposes armed interference or forcefully pushing for a so-called regime change in Syria, Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun said in Beijing yesterday, a day before he was heading to Damascus to push for a peaceful and proper solution to the current crisis in the strife-ridden country.
"We don't believe that sanctions or the threat of sanctions are helpful to achieving an appropriate solution," said Zhai, who will be Beijing's first envoy to Syria since China and Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit.
Beijing and Moscow fear the UN Security Council's resolution could be interpreted as a mandate for military intervention in Syria by some other countries.
"The demand of a regime change is the direct way to even more deaths," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Vienna on Wednesday, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
"That's the way to full civil war," Lavrov said.
"We condemn all acts of violence against innocent civilians and urge the government and all political factions of Syria to immediately and fully end all violence, and quickly restore stability and normal social order," Xinhua quoted Zhai as saying.
Assad, who is battling an 11-month-old uprising against his regime, on Wednesday called for a referendum on a new constitution draft on February 26.
However, Syrian opposition groups rejected Assad's initiative and called upon Syrian voters to boycott the referendum to "confirm the lack of public support for this criminal regime," AFP reported yesterday, citing a statement by the Local Coordination Committees.
It added that Assad's regime had lost its constitutional and social legitimacy and there was no alternative but to topple it.
The White House on Wednesday dismissed Assad's proposal to hold a referendum on a new constitution as laughable. "It makes a mockery of the Syrian revolution," White House spokesman Jay Carney said, according to Reuters.
A senior diplomat in the Syrian embassy in Beijing had previously told the Global Times that Assad won't resign under any circumstance.
"Our president was elected by Syrian people, and he will never bow to the illegal requests by armed terrorists," the diplomat said, adding that Damascus wouldn't accept any foreign peacekeeping forces, but welcome an observer mission.
The Arab League suspended its monitoring mission in late January and had since then mulled sending international peacekeepers into Syria.
"The monitors have learned the truth, but they were never given a chance to speak it out loudly," the diplomat said.
The UN General Assembly set to vote late yesterday on a measure condemning repression in Syria.
Russia said it would not support the UN General Assembly draft resolution because it is "unbalanced," a source told the Interfax News Agency yesterday.
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