MOSCOW, 25 January 2005 — Syrian President Bashar Assad said yesterday he was coming to Moscow seeking a new path for peace in the Middle East rather than high-tech arms against archrival Israel. “Russia is a great power, and it carries great responsibilities for world affairs,” he told the Izvestia daily in an interview that will also be aired on Channel One state television tonight.
“Thus Russia has to help stabilize the situation in the Middle East,” Bashar said in the interview published hours before his arrival in Moscow for the four-day state visit. The date of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet been announced but he will meet Moscow’s Middle Eastern expert and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov this morning in the first Syrian state visit here since 1999.
Bashar said the talks would focus on the mounting crisis surrounding Iran - an Islamic state where Russia is constructing a controversial nuclear power plant and which has recently fallen under the radar of Washington military strategists. “If we do not find a solution to this crisis than its consequences will even be felt in Europe,” said Bashar.
It was not clear if he was referring to potential strikes against Iran or Tehran’s potential procurement of nuclear weapons. Bashar also echoed Russian denials that Moscow was in the process of negotiating the sale of next-generation Iskander-E missiles that could help Syria strike any target in the Jewish state. “I would like to point out that we do not need to negotiate the technical details of such deals during state visits,” Bashar said.
Russia has been eager to stamp out the rumors by arguing that it had long traded arms with Syria — its most important ally in the Middle East — but had no intention of selling a weapon that penetrates existing Western defense systems.
The Iskander scandal was particularly humiliating for Russia because it came during Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov’s visit to Washington earlier this month in which the two sides neared an agreement on new controls over sales of portable missiles to “rogue states”.
Instead Ivanov left Washington smarting from a US rebuke over the Iskander reports that prompted an emergency government session in Israel.
