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Russia is looking to a proposed international conference on Syria to pressure Saudi Arabia and Qatar to halt help for rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, a senior lawmaker in the Russian ruling party said.
Russia and China on June 6 proposed a meeting to back peace efforts by United Nations envoy Kofi Annan. The two nations, along with the U.S., the U.K., France, the European Union, the Organization of Islamic Conference and Arab League states, Turkey and Iran should take part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Beijing after talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.
“Boats carrying weapons are being dispatched and they are getting financing too because Saudi Arabia and Qatar are paying salaries to members of the Syrian Free Army,” Alexei Pushkov, the head of the foreign-affairs committee in the lower house of parliament, said in a telephone interview yesterday in Moscow. “Instead of supporting the armed actions of the opposition, we want them to exert a restraining influence.”
Putin, who returned to the presidency for a third term last month, has signaled that Russia won’t insist on Assad staying in power. A U.S. delegation, led by Fred Hof, the State Department’s special envoy to the Syrian opposition, began talks with Russian officials including Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov today in Moscow. A statement will be issued after the meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Veto Threat
Russia has shielded the Assad regime, its biggest Middle East ally, vowing to veto any attempt at imposing sanctions on the Syrian government through the UN Security Council. The threat has hobbled 15 months of international efforts to pressure the Assad government as the conflict deteriorated from peaceful protests into an armed fighting with sectarian undercurrents.
The U.S. delegation will try to forge a common approach to moving Assad aside, with the goal of replacing him with someone acceptable to both sides in the conflict, according to two U.S officials speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar, ruled by Sunni monarchies that are at odds with Syria’s mainly Shiite ally, Iran, have publicly voiced support for arming the rebels. Syria’s ambassador to Russia said last week that the two countries are sabotaging the UN plan by continuing to arm rebels in violation of a cease-fire agreement reached in April.
Arms Shipments
“Weapons are entering Syria through its borders with Lebanon and Turkey,” Riad Haddad said in a June 1 interview. “And these are heavy weapons.”
Lebanese authorities at the end of April seized a ship originating in Libya that was carrying anti-tank and anti- aircraft missiles destined for Syrian opposition groups, Haddad said.
The U.S. in turn has accused Russia of propping up Assad’s regime by supplying weapons to Syria. The latest shipment was delivered by a boat owned by billionaire Vladimir Lisin on May 26, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Annan, who visited Syria in the wake of the May 25 massacre of more than 100 people in Houla, called on Assad’s government and opposition forces to halt the violence and abide by the cease-fire agreement.
Russia, China and other countries received a request from the Syrian government to investigate the massacre in Houla, Pushkov said.
‘No Proof’
“There’s no proof of either the involvement of pro- government or opposition forces,” he said. “If you listen to Western media, you hear witnesses who say pro-government militia carried it out, but if you listen to Syrian media, you hear witnesses who say that it was opposition fighters.”
The UN Human Rights Council called for a probe into the Houla killings, including dozens of children, which it said were carried out by “pro-regime elements” and government forces. Syria blamed terrorists for the atrocity.
The timing of the Houla massacre, as well as reports two days ago by opposition activists of the killing of 78 people, more than half of them women and children, in a village in Hama province, point to the involvement of rebel fighters, according to Pushkov. The first massacre happened a day before Annan visited Syria and the latest just before UN Security Council discussions on Syria, he said.
‘Absolutely Counterproductive’
“To carry out such acts on the eve of such events is absolutely counterproductive for the Syrian government,” Pushkov said. “To the contrary, I can see that for rebel fighters, especially Islamist rebel fighters for whom blood is cheap, as shown by experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places, there is a direct political benefit.”
Syria has found evidence that fighters from Libya and Tunisia with ties to al-Qaeda are among the rebels and some of the Houla massacre was filmed, the Syrian ambassador to Russia said.
“The main aim is to cause failure of the Annan plan and to provoke foreign military interference,” he said.
In a sign of China’s growing interest in neighboring Afghanistan after the departure of the United States and NATO led forces, President Hu Jintao met the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, in the Great Hall of the People on Friday and announced a new strategic partnership between the two countries.
Mr. Karzai was given special attention this week at the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group of six countries organized by China that includes Russia and Central Asian nations bordering Afghanistan. China is trying to ensure that a Muslim separatist group in a western region does not benefit from the Taliban when Western forces leave Afghanistan.
In a joint statement, China and Afghanistan said they would step up cooperation in security and the fight against terrorism, as well as increase intelligence sharing. No specifics were given.
A modest $23 million aid grant for unspecified projects that accompanied the new partnership indicated that despite concerns about the stability of Afghanistan after 2014, when most United States and allied troops are expected to be gone, China had no immediate plans to play a major development role.
This was Mr. Karzai’s fifth, and most prominent, visit to China. No Chinese leader has been to Afghanistan since the 1958 visit of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai.
China’s major worry is the prospect of a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan lending sanctuary to the separatist group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, led by ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim people in the autonomous western region of Xinjiang . The group wants a breakaway homeland in Xinjiang.
In official statements, the Chinese government refrains from specifying the threat of Afghanistan's harboring Uighur separatists, but an orderly transfer of power that would stop short of a Taliban takeover appears to be of uppermost importance for China.
At a Foreign Ministry press briefing shortly after the warm welcome for Mr. Karzai, a spokesman said China supported a “step by step” process that allowed for a role by other countries after the withdrawal of Western troops.
In efforts to work toward some semblance of stability in Afghanistan after the Americans leave, Chinese and American diplomats have been talking for more than a year about the shape of the post-2014 political landscape, American officials and Chinese analysts say.
A new kind of Great Game, a competition for influence among Afghanistan’s neighbors, many of whom belong to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or play a role in it, is a likely outcome from the Western withdrawal, the analysts say.
China has already put down investment stakes in mineral-rich Afghanistan, signing an oil and gas deal late last year, and beginning development at a copper mine four years ago.
But from the discussions between the United States and China, it was clear that China would not play any significant security role inside Afghanistan, a decision consistent with its noninterference policies abroad, the American officials and analysts say.
The Chinese government has refused to contribute to a $4.1 billion fund for sustaining the Afghan Army after 2014, but has offered to train a small number of Afghan soldiers, particularly in antiterror techniques.
In a show of cooperation with the United States, China admitted 15 young Afghan diplomats to the China Foreign Affairs University last month as part of a joint American-Chinese program. The State Department will also sponsor training for the Afghan diplomats.
China’s main concern is about how post-2014 Afghanistan will affect China’s internal security, the analysts said.
“China’s first concern is national security and to make sure the Uighurs don’t get more strength,” said Yun Sun, a Washington-based analyst specializing in China’s neighbors. “The official line is that the Uighurs get terrorist training in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
“China supports the international community in its efforts in Afghanistan, but stays away from direct military involvement,” Zhao Huasheng, director of the Center for Russia and Central Asia Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, wrote in a recent paper.
China dislikes the Taliban because of their close relations with the East Turkestan group, but deals with the Taliban on a pragmatic basis, he wrote.
Looking toward the uncertainties of post-2014 Afghanistan, China has already established some forms of communication with elements of the Taliban through the channels of the Pakistani military, said Sajjan Gohel, the international security director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London-based group.
“Beijing wants guarantees that the Taliban will not give sanctuary or support to the Uighur terrorists should they develop an open presence in Afghanistan after the troop handover,” Mr. Gohel said.
The prospects of instability in Afghanistan have not discouraged China’s investments in big energy and mining projects.
The China National Petroleum Company signed a deal in December to explore oil and natural gas in the Amu Darya River Basin, an area where the Soviet Union held concessions during its occupation.
As part of the deal, the Chinese company pledged to build Afghanistan’s first oil refinery within three years.
In 2008, the China Metallurgical Construction Company invested more than $3.5 billion in the Aynak Copper Mine in Logar Province in Afghanistan, not far from the Chinese border.
