WarSclerotic

Russia defends arms sales to Syria – FT.com.

Moscow forcefully rejected on Wednesday Hillary Clinton’s accusation that Russia was supplying Syria with helicopter gunships that could be used against civilians, as Syria announced it had “cleansed” the rebel town of Haffa of armed fighters.

Speaking in Tehran, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Moscow was instead “completing contracts that were signed and paid for a long time ago. All of them are contracts for what are solely air defence systems.”

He said: “We do not supply Syria or anyone else with resources that are used in fighting peaceful demonstrators” – and, seeking to turn the tables on Mrs Clinton, added, “unlike the United States, which regularly supplies that region with such special equipment, including one such shipment [that] went to one of the Gulf countries recently, but for some reason the Americans consider this to be in order”.

Mr Lavrov also drew attention to comments made by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday, in which the spokesman said that although the Pentagon knew Mr Assad was turning to helicopter gunships, it could not confirm they were being supplied by Russia.

However, Mrs Clinton returned to the theme of Russian military sales on Wednesday, saying the US had “repeatedly urged the Russian government to cut these ties immediately” and suspend further deliveries of weapons and other military hardware.

She added that Russia was putting its “vital interests in the region and relationships” at risk by blocking international action on a transition plan, in remarks reported by the Associated Press.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group affiliated to the opposition, said rebels had retreated from Haffa on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning after more than a week of clashes that killed 68 soldiers and 56 civilians and rebels.

Haffa is the only majority Sunni town in the coastal province of Latakia where many people belong to the Alawite sect from which top regime members are drawn. It is one of several places where the regime has carried out intensive assaults on opposition areas in recent days amid reports that rebels are becoming better organised and better equipped.

Activists have also reported bombardments in the central provinces of Homs and Hama, the northern province of Aleppo and the eastern province of Deir Ezzour.

The violence had sent about 2,000 refugees across the Turkish border in the last 48 hours alone, the Turkish foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

In spite of the mounting violence, the government dismissed UN peacekeeping chief Hervé Ladsous’s characterisation of the conflict as a civil war, claiming it was “not consistent with reality”.

“What is happening in Syria is a war against armed groups that choose terrorism,” state news quoted a foreign ministry statement as saying on Wednesday.

Russia’s state arms export monopoly Rosoboroneksport also released a statement on Wednesday saying that it “does not supply arms and military equipment that violate UN sanctions and other international agreements”. Russian Helicopters, Russia’s state-controlled helicopter manufacturer, declined to comment on Wednesday, although a spokesman said all international sales were the responsibility of Rosoboroneksport.

Fyodor Lukyanov, chief editor of the Moscow-based journal Russia in Global Affairs, said the exchange between Moscow and Washington appeared to be a “psychological propaganda war”. He added that Mrs Clinton’s comments seemed intended to put “psychological pressure on Russia by creating the [international] impression that the only thing Russia cares about is money”.

A Reuters report on Wednesday citing four Damascus-based bankers said that Russia was involved in helping the Syrians print new banknotes. The banknotes had been printed in Russia and were being circulated as a trial run there, the report claimed.

Natalia Nikiforova, assistant to the general director of Gosznak, Russia’s state money printing agency, said Russian-printed money was not in circulation in Syria. She said she did not know if they had received an order, however, adding that “we cannot comment on this until there is an announcement by the client country’s central bank”.

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