“President Bashar alAssad met on Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,” SANA said, after state television showed thousands of regime supporters welcoming Lavrov’s motorcade.
Russian news agencies also announced the start of the talks.
“The leader of every country must take responsibility ... and you are assuming yours,” they quoted Lavrov as saying as he turned towards Assad at the beginning of the meeting. “We hope that the Arab people can live in peace and understanding,” the Russian minister added, according to reports.
Earlier, China had expressed hope that the visit by Russia’s top diplomat to Damascus would pay off, after a rare double veto of a UN resolution on Syria by Beijing and Moscow triggered international fury.
China also said it was considering sending its own envoys to the Middle East to help resolve the conflict in Syria, which opposition groups say has cost at least 6,000 lives so far.
Thirteen countries, including Pakistan, voted on the UN Security Council resolution on Saturday, which aimed to give strong backing to the Arab League’s plan to end a deadly government crackdown on protesters in Syria and demanded Syrian President Bashar alAssad to step down.
“We hope the mediation efforts by the Russian side can pay off,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said, ahead of a visit to Damascus by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “China is also considering sending people to relevant countries in the region so as to play a constructive role in the political settlement of the Syrian issue.”
The Russian and Chinese vetoes came hours after the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) reported a “massacre” in the central flashpoint city of Homs with more than 230 civilians killed during an overnight assault by regime forces.
The double veto drew international condemnation, with Syria’s opposition saying Beijing and Moscow had handed President alAssad’s regime a “licence to kill”.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused China and Russia of “protecting the brutal regime in Damascus”, calling their veto of the resolution a “travesty”.
Russia’s Lavrov has said that the resolution wrongly blamed Assad’s regime alone for the violence and that the text should have also taken aim at the opposition.
He has not divulged the nature of his mission, although analysts have said that he may be intending to persuade Assad to take steps towards stepping down in favour of a deputy, in line with a plan set out by the Arab League.
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China wants no outside interference when it mistreats its own people so it must support other regimes that do the same.
“There are some foreigners who have nothing better to do, than to criticize China’s affairs. Now, China firstly does not export revolution, secondly does not export poverty and hunger, or make trouble with you, so why do you still want to complain?” said Vice President Xi. Essentially Xi is saying, as long as we are only oppressing our own people, America should butt out.
This shows that China will continue to be ruled by an authoritarian regime for the next generation of leaders. Why then do American universities who treasure academic freedom make deal after deal with China? The University of Michigan has a joint campus in Shanghai that was the source of the cyber attacks on Google last year. There are many other American universities that have similar deals with China. Read more at www.china-threat.com