West does not know what to do if extremist comes to power in Syria

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Western countries did not know what to do if extremist came to power in Syria as a result of their interference. “Are they going to wave them away with a newspaper?” he asked at the Valdai International Discussion Club on Thursday, September 19. Putin urged the West to say honestly that it had started providing external support as soon as the conflict broke out in Syria. “How did the terrorist group Al-Nusra come into existence there? Even the [U.S.] Department of State has admitted that Al-Qaeda units are fighting there,” he said. “We can’t watch mass killings calmly, but if we try to interfere on either side, there will be no balance. We must find points of contact and equilibrium that would hold for some time,” Putin said. He mentioned Libya as an example. “Has it become better there now? What is the result?” he asked, adding that the way proposed to solve the problem in that country had proved wrong. “This is why we want to forge constructive dialogue with the United States,” the president said. The use of force against Syria would be a blow to the world order not to that country, Vladimir Putin said emphasized. “This would be a blow to the world order, not to Syria. This is what I mean,” he said at the Valdai International Discussion Club on Thursday, September 19. “There are no exclusive interests in Syria we would be pursuing by trying to keep the present government there. We are trying to preserve the principles of international law,” he said. The head of state recalled that the U.N. Charter had been amended, at the U.S. insistence, to include a provision, according to which matters of peace and war could be solved only unanimously. “There is a deep meaning in this, no matter how hard it could be,” Putin said. He stressed that if any country that feels vulnerable starts delivering strikes wherever it wants, the world order and the importance of the United Nations and its Security Council would be reduced to zero. Putin also agreed with former German Defence Minister Volker Ruhe that war crimes against people by the ruling regimes were abominable. “In the modern world, no one country should be allowed to attack another country as some did in the 1920s, but states must be compelled to protect their people,” Ruhe said, adding that the president of a country is responsible for protecting his people. “I fully agree with this,” Putin said.