[An Nahar] Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday lashed out at the Syrian opposition for its "obsession" with toppling Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Scourge of Qusayr...
which he said was holding up peace efforts in the country.
Don't they see the continued iron-fisted oppression by Assad and his family as the whole problem? Might that account for why they're "obsessed?"
"For now, everything is running up against the opposition's obsession with toppling Bashir al-Assad's regime," Lavrov told news hounds at his traditional start-of-year news conference.
"As long as this irreconcilable position remains in place, nothing good can happen. Armed actions will continue and people will die."
He said that the opposition's insistence on ousting Assad was thwarting efforts to find a diplomatic solution backed by the former international peace 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 his successor Lakhdar Brahimi.