Russian Foreign Minister Says Assad Won't Step Down, Dan't Be Persuaded

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press
4:01 p.m. EST, December 29, 2012

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's foreign minister said Saturday that Syrian President Bashar Assad has no intention of stepping down and it would be impossible to try to persuade him otherwise.

After a meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.'s envoy for the Syrian crisis, Sergey Lavrov also said that the Syrian opposition risks sacrificing many more lives if it continues to insist on Assad leaving office as a precondition for holding talks on Syria's future.

Assad "has repeatedly said publicly and privately, including in his meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi in Damascus not long ago, that he does not intend to leave for anywhere, that he will stay to the end in his post, that he will, as he expressed it, defend the Syrian people, Syrian sovereignty and so forth," Lavrov said. "There's no possibility to change this position."

Brahimi warned that the country's civil war could plunge the entire region into chaos by sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring nations, but his talks in Moscow produced no sign of progress toward settling the crisis.

Read more: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-eu-russia-syria-20121229,0,7642561.story

[Faygo Kid]

1. Sounds like he will end as did Ghaddafy.

Or Ceauscescu, or so many others who insist on staying on when the handwriting is on the wall.

[marble falls]

2. More like Nicolae Ceauescu. Or Saddam Hussain. Bet he doesn't take it like a man ....

like Saddam Hussein did. At his hanging, he was the only person there who had any dignity.

[malz]

3. "Can't"