Russia rejects schemes to push Assad into resignation, exile

The weaponary -- including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and anti-tank weapons -- is being transported mostly across the Turkish border, in a move funded by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the report revealed.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has ruled out any peace plan for Syria that calls on President Bashar al-Assad to step down and go into exile.


"A scheme according to which President Assad should leave somewhere before something happens in terms of a cessation of violence and a political process, this scheme does not work simply from the very start," the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying on Thursday.

"It is infeasible because he will not leave," he added.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011, with both the government and armed groups accuse each other of intensifying the violence.

Over the past weeks, the anti-Syria Western governments have been calling for the overthrow of the Assad government.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on June 20, “No one is entitled to decide for other nations who should be in power and who should not.”

“A change of power, if it occurs -- and it could only occur by constitutional means -- should result in peace and stop the bloodshed,” he stated at a press conference in after the G20 summit in Mexico.


Meanwhile, a New York Times report has confirmed CIA agents operating in southern Turkey are secretly helping anti-governmnet armed groups.

The agents are also helping the anti-Syria governments decide which gangs inside the Arab country will “receive arms to fight the Syrian government.”


Washington is also considering providing the armed gangs with “satellite imagery and other detailed intelligence on Syrian troop locations and movements,” it added.