Alwaght- Russia has warned the United States against attempting to militarily toppling Syrian President Bashar Assad following reports some within the Obama administration are planning to such attacks.
Overthrowing President Assad "wouldn't help a successful fight against terrorism and could plunge the region into total chaos," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova also said on Friday that, “It is not a secret to us that there are political forces in the US who favor a military solution [to the Syrian crisis]. But this is not our method."
Meanwhile, Russia's President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the Syrian opposition should be encouraged to participate in government work to help a dialogue that can lead to new elections being held in the country.
Speaking to Russia's top economic forum, Putin said that creating a new government that will have the trust of most of Syria's population is key to ending the five-year conflict. He said that this goal can only be achieved through drafting a new constitution and holding new elections.
Putin said that Syrian President Bashar Assad, who visited Moscow last year, has pledged to help achieve that.
"There is nothing more democratic than elections," Putin said.
The Russian leader said he expects the U.S. to work with its allies in the region to encourage the Syrian opposition to engage in a constructive dialogue with the government.
"It's necessary to think about incorporating some opposition representatives in the existing government structures," he said.
Dozens of State Department officials have signed an internal document that calls for targeted military strikes against the Syrian government, according to the Wall Street Journal.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that the internal memo on Syria signed by more than 50 US diplomats is an "important statement" that he would discuss when he gets back to Washington.
"Described as the 'dissent channel cable,' the document appears to mirror the CIA's own narrative, which is that in attacking ISIS the US is fighting the wrong war in Syria, and instead demands that the US shift focus entirely to militarily imposing regime change on the Syrian government," Jason Ditz of Antiwar.com has said.
Meanwhile Russia's foreign minister said Thursday that he believes the US may hope to use al-Qaeda's branch in Syria to unseat Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's government.
Addressing an economic forum in St Petersburg, Sergey Lavrov argued that the reluctance of US-backed Syrian opposition groups to distance themselves from al-Qaeda's branch in Syria, the al-Nusra Front, has been a major reason behind continuing fighting.
He said the US could be playing some kind of game here, and they may want to keep al-Nusra in some form and use it to topple the President Assad.
The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has so far claimed the lives of nearly half a million people, over one million injured and an estimated 12.5 million now displaced.
Syrian government says terrorists in the country are backed by the US and its regional allies including the Israeli regime, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
