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Monday 15 Feb 2016 - 13:21 Makkah mean time-6-5-1437
Munich, (IINA) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned on Saturday that the world is slipping into a new cold war after European leaders condemned his country’s airstrikes on Syria and called on Vladimir Putin to end them as a precursor to peace negotiations, The Guardian reported.
The prime minister told a security conference in Munich that a lack of cooperation threatened to return the continent to “40 years ago when a wall was standing in Europe”. He rejected the widely held belief that Russian planes had hit civilian targets in Syria.
“There is no evidence of our bombing civilians, even though everyone is accusing us of this”, he said. “Russia is not trying to achieve some secret goals in Syria. We are simply trying to protect our national interests”.
“Creating trust is hard … but we have to start. Our positions differ, but they do not differ as much as 40 years ago when a wall was standing in Europe”, He said. “You could say even more sharply: we have fallen into a new cold war”.
“Nearly on a daily basis, we are being blamed for the most terrible threat to NATO as a whole, to Europe, to America, to other countries. They make scary movies where Russia starts a nuclear war. I sometimes wonder: are we in 2016 or 1962?”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg rejected Medvedev’s accusations, he said: “Russia’s rhetoric, posture, and exercises of its nuclear forces are aimed at intimidating its neighbors, undermining trust and stability in Europe”.
The Russian prime minister’s comments came as the fighting escalated in northern Syria, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying that Turkey had shelled Syrian territories for the second time this month.
Medvedev’s French counterpart, Manuel Valls, told the conference: “To find the path to peace again, the Russian bombing of civilians [in Syria] has to stop”.
The U.S secretary of state, John Kerry, said most of Russia’s attacks had been against legitimate opposition groups in Syria. “This is the moment. This is a hinge point”, he said. “Decisions made in the coming days and weeks, and a few months could end the war in Syria, or could define a very difficult set of choices for the future”.
“The war in Syria has now lasted for almost five years and shows no signs of burning itself out, which is why we are so focused on a political track. If the international community and the Syrians themselves miss the opportunity now before us to achieve that political resolution to the conflict [then] the violence, the bloodshed, the torture, the bombing, and the anguish will continue”.
AG/IINA
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