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Sunday 24 July 2016 - 09:13

Impudent, Naive; Russian Media React to Saudi Foreign Minister’s Offer

Story Code : 555084
Impudent, Naive; Russian Media React to Saudi Foreign Minister’s Offer
Su Ponina, the deputy president of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS)— an entity known as close to the Kremlin— has commented on the issue by saying that al-Jubeir's offer for helping Russia to strengthen its Middle East position in exchange for lifting support for the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad indicated the Saudi Arabian foreign minister's diplomatic naiveness.
 
Talking to the Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya on Saturday, she said that al-Jubeir was yet young and it appeared that he had not enough experience in politics to enable him to measure the role and place of Russia in the International scene, as it cannot be evaluated using the petrodollars or Saudi Arabian Riyal.
 
The Russian top political analyst added that Russia's Middle Eastern interests went beyond the framework of supporting President Bashar al-Assad. It is weird to assess the measures of Russia using basic criteria or calculators, according to the Russian expert. She continued that it was indicative of naiveness of the Saudi foreign minister in subtle but large-scale issues of the politics.
 
She also said that the Russian government would not change its stances on Syria even in the future, and it would keep moving within the current course. She also maintained that despite good relations between the two countries, it was not an acceptable way for Riyadh to allure Moscow because it was not possible to tie the economic partnership to the settlement of the Syrian crisis, and in fact this matter could not be gauged using money.
 
The Russian expert said that the latest terrorist attacks showed that the crisis in Syria carried massive consequences for the global security.
 
"How the lives of French children who were killed in Nice terrorist attack could be compensated?" She wondered.
 
"Russia now believes that it is necessary to cooperate to fight terrorism," she continued.
 
The Foreign Economic Relations, a special news agency of Russia, has deprecated al-Jubeir's offer and said the Saudi Arabian foreign minister made an inappropriate offer to Moscow while Russia did not so far witness such an impudence.
 
Nikolay Sokholov, the senior expert in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences,in his interview with the same news agency has said that the foreign minister's impudent remarks were out of all of the internationally accepted frameworks. He added that however the Saudis, due to their specific view, did not see their suggestions as embarrassing.
 
Sokholov continued that if he wanted to exactly interpret the Saudi offer he could say that Russia should sell its ally Syria in exchange for money. Likening the Saudi Arabian offer to Russia to Judah's betraying of Jesus Christ in return for receiving 100 silver coins from the Jewry, the Russian expert has noted that the nature of the suggestion was offensive. He added that since two decades ago, Riyadh made colorful and deceptive offers to Moscow and in exchange demanded it to take specific steps. But no country that enjoys a global prestige would yield to Riyadh’s demands, according to Sokholov.
 
The published interview of al-Jubeir on the kingdom's readiness to offer "economic bribery" as it stands as supporter of anti-Syrian government terrorist groups has received negative reactions in other Russian media.
 
Moscow so far several times has rejected calls from the US and Saudi Arabia to quit support for the Syrian government, arguing that Bashar al-Assad is a legal president of Syria, and only the Syrian people could decide through election on his fate in the country's politics.
 
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that he fully rejected his American counterpart's insistence on Assad’s removal as precondition for direct Washington-Moscow anti-terror cooperation in Syria.
 
Since September 30, 2015 and after an official request by the Syrian government, Russia bombed thousands of the terrorists' positions including ISIS' and al-Nusra Front' in Syria using its Aerospace Defense Forces in Hmeimimim Air Base including tens of bombers and helicopters,  surveillance jets and drones, as well as its naval vessels, submarines, and strategic bombers. It also contributed to liberation of many of captured areas through providing the Syrian ground forces with air cover.
 
Five years ago, the Western-Arab bloc mobilized and organized the most dangerous and radical terrorists within different terror groups including ISIS, al-Nusra Front, Ahrar ash-Sham, and Jaish al-Islam in a bid to overthrow the legal Syrian government within six months, pushing the country and the neighboring Iraq into devastating domestic wars that so far took lives of thousands, left millions displaced, and left behind massive destructions.
Source : Al Waqt
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