Pencilneckal-Assad
Trampler of Homs...
but urged world powers to work for the peace plan of U.N. 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...and not regime change.
"We do not support the Syrian government. We support the plan of Kofi Annan," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a joint news conference with his British counterpart William Hague.
But he added that world powers had to "play the game of fulfilling the Kofi Annan plan and not the game of regime change."
Hague for his part warned there will be "chaos and civil war" if the Annan plan is not implemented.
Their meeting came after The New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
reported the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama
The Cambridge police acted stupidly...
is considering working with Russia on a plan for Assad's departure under a proposal modeled on the transition in Yemen.
Lavrov did not make any direct comment on the report but made clear that Russia's priority was not "who is in power" in Syria but ending the violence.
"We are deeply worried that the Annan plan is being implemented unsatisfactorily. We are still far from our goals," Lavrov said.
Russia had earlier joined other U.N. Security Council powers in condemning the Syrian government for using artillery in a massacre in the town of Houla that left 108 people dead, many of them children, and 300 injured.
Britannia and La Belle France had proposed a U.N. statement making an even stronger condemnation of the Assad government but this was rejected by Russia.
In contrast to the West's placing of the blame for the massacre on the Syrian government, Lavrov said Moscow believed both the regime and the armed opposition shared the blame.
"Here we have a situation where both sides clearly had a hand in the fact that peaceful citizens were killed," he said.
Hague had called on Russia ahead of his trip to use its leverage with the Assad regime and Lavrov said: "We are putting pressure on the Syrian government on an almost daily basis.