Van Rompuy: EU, Russia Must Overcome Syria Differences
Russia and the European Union must overcome their differences on the crisis in Syria to prevent a full-scale civil war, the EU president said Monday after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Herman Van Rompuy, who is in Russia with EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso to meet with Putin, admitted after the talks that the EU and Russia "might have some divergent assessments" over the situation in Syria.
But he said they agreed that implementing U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan was the only way forward.
"We fully agree that the Annan plan as a whole provides the best opportunity to break the cycle of violence in Syria, avoiding a civil war and finding a peaceful, lasting solution," he said.
Van Rompuy and Barroso were expected to press Putin to harden his line against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime at the summit meeting in a palace outside Saint Petersburg.
International frustration with the Kremlin's stance on Syria is growing again after Russia refused to squarely blame Assad for the massacre of more than 100 people in Houla last month, instead saying rebels shared some of the responsibility.
Standing side-by-side with Putin, Van Rompuy said both the European Union and Russia needed to overcome their differences to ensure that the violence was halted.
"We need to combine our efforts in order for this to happen and to find common messages on which we agree. We need to walk towards an immediate stop of all forms of violence in Syria and towards a process of political transition."
Putin did not explicitly address the situation in Syria and none of the questions asked by reporters at the tightly controlled news conference touched on the issue.
But he alluded to the differences with the European Union in his opening statement, without going into details of the closed-door talks.
"We discussed the most outstanding international and regional political issues," said Putin.
"This, of course, is the situation in Syria, Iran, the Middle East and several other regions," he added. "Of course, our positions do not coincide on every issue or in everything."
Source: Agence France Presse
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