Russia dashes US hopes for increased pressure on Syria

By Julian Pecquet - 05/30/12 02:56 PM ET

Russia on Wednesday dashed U.S. hopes that the Kremlin would increase pressure on its ally Syria following the massacre of more than 100 civilians in Houma.

The White House had expressed optimism that the massacre could prove a turning point, and on Sunday Russia joined the other members of the United Nations Security Council in condemning Syrian forces. On Wednesday, however, the Foreign Ministry criticized Tuesday's decision by the United States and others to expel Syrian diplomats, and Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said it would be “premature” to impose new sanctions.

“Given international efforts towards a settlement in Syria,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said via Twitter, “some Western countries’ decision to expel Syrian ambassadors is counterproductive.”

And Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov for his part told the Interfax news agency that for Russia to increase pressure on Syria would be “hardly appropriate,” London's Telegraph reports.

“It would make sense to expect a continuation of the Russian Federation's consistent and well-argued line" on Syria during President Vladimir Putin's visits to Germany and France on Friday, Peskov said, according to the Telegraph.

The unwavering stance led U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice to warn Wednesday that widespread sectarian conflict across the region looms if U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan fails and the U.N. Security Council can't stay united.

“In the absence of either of those two scenarios,” Rice said, “there seems to me to be only one other alternative — and that is indeed the worst case, which seems unfortunately at the present to be the most probable — and that is that the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies and reaches a higher degree of intensity and involves countries in the region, it takes on increasing sectarian forms, and we have a major crisis not only in Syria but in the region.”