AFP

MOSCOW

RUSSIA said on Wednesday it was premature to take new UN action on Syria after the massacre of 108 civilians in Houla and said it remained firmly opposed to foreign intervention in the crisis.

The comments came just a day after the US State Department said it hoped last week’s tragedy would spark a “turning point” in Russia’s reluctance to take tougher action against its Soviet-era ally. A growing group of world leaders including French President Francois Hollande have refused to rule out armed intervention to stamp out more than 14 months of fighting in which 13,000 people are feared to have been killed.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the rebuke Syria has already received at the UN Security Council for the massacre went far enough.

“We believe that a review now by the Security Council of any new measures on the situation would be premature,” Gatilov told the Interfax news agency.

“It is essential to give the plan of (UN-Arab League envoy) Kofi Annan time to work” because intervention could “only exacerbate the situation for both Syria and the region as a whole,” he added.

“And it is also important for all the outside players including our Western partners to put corresponding pressure on the opposition.” Another top Russian official said the idea of armed intervention also supported by nations such as Australia appeared to be based on “emotions”. “Such statements are driven by political emotion,” said First Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov. “There is a medical principle that says ‘do not make it worse’. We should not forget it. The most important thing is to remain realistic about what is happening in Syria,” Denisov said.

France’s new Socialist president on Tuesday said he could not rule out supporting military intervention in Syria as long as it was sanctioned by the Security Council a world body where Russia wields veto power.

“An armed intervention is not excluded on the condition that it is carried out with respect to international law, meaning after deliberation by the United Nations Security Council,” Hollande said in a television interview.

Russia had together with China blocked two Security Council resolutions condemning President Bashar al- Assad out of concern that any such measure could be interpreted as open license for an attack aimed at ousting his regime. Moscow’s stance stems in part from anger at the NATO-led Libya offensive it did not block at the Security Council last year and later argued had never been fully authorised.

But it has been a close ally since the late Soviet era and still supplies Syria with arms in exchange for the right to lease its naval port and broader diplomatic influence over the volatile Middle East region.

Gatilov also called for a broader international discussion of how the 300 UN monitors assigned with Russia’s approval to Syria could be more effective in their work.

“Perhaps we need to reassess how the UN monitors are working and think about some additional mechanism that could control the implementation of Annan’s plan,” said Gatilov.