Russia dismisses report of US, UN, Syria opposition meeting

The United Nations refugee agency said on Friday that for the first time it had reached the opposition-held Azzas area of northern Syria where it found an estimated 45,000 displaced people living in "appalling" conditions in makeshift camps.              

"This is an area that we have not been able to physically reach ever since the beginning of the conflict," Yacoub El Hillo, director of UNHCR's Middle East and North Africa Bureau, told reporters in Geneva.               

"They want us to continue, it could not have happened without the Syrian government. For the planes to land near Latakia we had to have landing permits and also for the trucks to move," he said, adding its convoy had delivered 2,000 tents and 15,000 blankets.                

This as a four way meeting between senior officials from the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the Syrian opposition is scheduled in Munich on Saturday to discuss a political transition in the country, Syrian opposition sources said, an event which was later denied by the Deputy Russian Foreign Minister             

"As it stands today, there is no such meeting mentioned in the program of the Russian Foreign Minister," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said on Twitter.                  

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a parting warning on Thursday evening about Syria's civil war, accusing Iran of playing an increasingly prominent role in directing the violence, which she said heightened the danger of a larger regional conflict that draws in Israel or other neighbors.                                    

"I've done what was possible to do," Clinton told reporters on the eve of her last day as secretary of state. But she painted a harrowing picture of a war that could still get worse.
                       
"The worst kind of predictions about what could happen internally and spilling over the borders of Syria are certainly within the realm of the possible now," she said.                                
The conflict "is distressing on all fronts," Clinton told a roundtable of journalists Thursday, a day before John Kerry is sworn in as her successor. She pointed the finger primarily at Iran, accusing it of dispatching more personnel and better military materiel to President Bashar Assad's regime to help him defeat rebel forces. Its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, is also playing a bigger role in the conflict.                                             

"The Iranians are all in for Assad, and there is very little room for any kind of dialogue with them," Clinton said.                     

She spoke after Syria threatened Thursday to retaliate for an Israeli airstrike, and its ally Iran warned ominously that the Jewish state would regret the attack.                         

In a letter to the U.N. secretary-general, Assad's regime stressed its "right to defend itself, its territory and sovereignty" and holding Israel and its supporters accountable. And Ali Abdul-Karim Ali, Assad's ambassador in Lebanon, said his government maintained "the option and the capacity to surprise in retaliation."                      

Clinton declined to talk specifically about Israel's strike, which U.S. officials described as targeting trucks containing sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. The trucks were next to a military research facility, and the strike hit both the trucks and the facility, U.S. officials said.                          

In her strikingly candid assessment, Clinton spread the criticism to Russia, which has stymied U.S.-led efforts to set global sanctions against the Syrian regime at the U.N. Security Council. Washington and Moscow have remained in a three-way dialogue with the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, since late last year, but Clinton said the Russians were simultaneously providing financial assistance and military equipment to Assad.                               

"The Russians are not passive bystanders in their support for Assad. They have been much more active," she told reporters. "But maybe they will change. And maybe they will be more open to an international solution because they can't look at what's happening and not believe it could be incredibly dangerous to everyone's interests, including theirs."


REUTERS