By Jaime Ortega.
Russian president Vladimir Putin spoke of Syria, in his residence. Hours before the start of the G20 summit , Vladimir Putin warned the West to refrain from any military intervention against the regime of Bashar al Assad. Although , for the first time , and if it is proved that he used chemical weapons against civilians , as Washington says , “he would not rule out ” in favor of supporting a United Nations resolution to attack Damascus militarily .
“If there is objective evidence of who committed the crime (the use of chemical weapons), would be serious and decisive ,” he said .
Putin gave an interview to Russia’s state Channel 1 owned by the news agency The Associated Press. In it , he acknowledged that his government also presented some components of the missile defense system S -300 to Syria , but has frozen new shipments. But immediately explained that Russia might sell missile systems to other countries if the ” western nations ” – in reference to U.S. and France attack Syria without the backing of the Security Council of United Nations.
“We have our own ideas of what we do and how we do it in case the situation develops towards the use of force. We have our plans ,” he said in reference to a possible U.S. attack without UN support. Hours later , after the interview Putin stressed that” the U.S. Congress was not entitled to ” legitimize aggression ” .
The Russian President arrived in St. Petersburg , the city where he was born , to chair the two-day meeting that will bring together the Heads of State and Government of industrialized and emerging countries among which is Argentina – that also spoke of the tension with the U.S. .
The former agent of the KGB regretted that Obama canceled the bilateral meeting they should have had before the official summit in Moscow started.
Although the official meeting will focus on economic issues , from the U.S. government and from the Russian goverment he explained that the Syrian issue will be played in informal meetings .
In the same topic, and during the interview, Putin was confident that there will be a serious discussion on Syria and other issues in St. Petersburg .
Regarding the strained relationship between the two nations, Putin even compared it with the period of the Cold War , Putin was clear: “President Obama was not elected by the American people to please Russia. And me, your humble servant has been elected by the people of Russia to please anyone either but our nation,” he said .
” We worked and discussed some issues .’ Sometimes one of us gets angry. But I would like to reiterate that mutual global interests form a good basis to find a joint solution to our problems,” said Putin.
Russian President meets his third term as president after an interregnum in which he led the country with his ” dolphin ” Medvedev – which described as ” ridiculous ” that the government of President Bashar al- Assad ally Russia – would use chemical weapons to gain ground against the rebels. The country has been in a civil war for two years and a half, and already its left 110,000 dead and two million refugees.
“From our point of view, it seems completely absurd that regular armed forces , who are on the offensive today, and in some areas have surrounded the so-called rebels to kill them, and under these circumstances magically began to use chemical weapons knowing well that could serve as a pretext to apply sanctions against it , including the use of force,” he said.
The Obama administration does not think so . According to Washington , and the Syrian opposition , 1,429 people died in an August 21 attack against a Damascus suburb. The casualty figures given by other groups are considerably smaller , and Assad ‘s government blames the incident to the rebels trying to overthrow and who qualifies as “terrorists” .
Coincidentally, a team of United Nations inspection was in Syria , and away from the site kilométros attacked. Now awaiting the results of laboratory tests these international envoys gathered. During his visit, tissue samples of soil have been analyzed and are now being discussed in Geneva.
“If there is evidence that chemical weapons were used , and were used specifically by the regular army , that evidence should be sent to the Security Council of the UN,” said Putin. And, once said to be ” convincing. Should be based not on hearsay and information obtained by special services through some kind of wiretap, or in some conversations and weird things like that .”
As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he had seen some of the evidence showed by his American colleague, John Kerry , and said It was not “convincing ” .
Putin returned to this idea today in the interview when he said that even in the U.S. ” There are experts who believe that the evidence presented by the government is not convincing , and do not rule out the possibility that the opposition conduct a deliberate act of provocation to try to give their helpers a pretext for military intervention.”
In the lengthy interview , the Russian president also spoke about allegations that his government persecutes homosexuals but denied the existence of such policies , despite allegations of repression in the gay pride march and the resignation of athletes to participate in the Winter Olympics on February.
The Russian president also tried to ease tension between the two countries began tensing relations when, before the Syrian case , as Edward Snowden case , the young man announced that the U.S. spied on citizens around the world and even heads of state, and sought asylum in Russia after being pursued by the U.S. Justice .
