...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society...
, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday at a briefing in Moscow.
"We will not sanction the use of force at the United Nations Security Council," Lavrov said in televised remarks as he gave a briefing on Russia's proposal for an international conference on Syria.
He acknowledged that U.N.-Arab envoy Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...'s tattered peace plan for Syria was stalling but stressed the Kremlin saw no alternative to it.
"The settlement plan has begun to seriously falter," Lavrov said. "We do not see an alternative to the implementation of this plan."
Russia, which is pushing for a conference on Syria to include Iran despite U.S. protests, said that to deny Tehran a role in helping negotiate an end to the crisis would be "thoughtless".
"To say that Iran doesn't have a place because it is already to blame for everything and it's part of the problem and not part of the solution ... this is thoughtless to say the least," said Lavrov.
He said that Russia would be "only glad" to support the departure of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Trampler of Homs...
if Syrians agreed on it, without wanting to impose the process from the outside.