Middle East rift mars US-Russia 'reset'

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/ME26Ag01.html

The last thing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev did before departing for France to attend this week's Group of Eight summit meeting in Deauville was place a call to Damascus.

Prima facie, one may think the call made sense, since as Reuters reported, "Syria's crackdown on pro-democracy protests" is going to be high on the agenda of the summit. But Medvedev had other thoughts on his mind; he wanted to ostentatiously pick up the thread from his previous conversation with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on April 6.

According to the Kremlin statement, Medvedev on that occasion expressed Moscow's "support for the Syrian leadership's plans to carry out the internal reforms announced by Mr Assad in order to


prevent the situation in the country from deteriorating, prevent human casualties, and maintain civil peace".

According to reports, the casualty figure in Syria may since be approaching four digits and civil peace is in serious disarray. During his call on Tuesday, however, Medvedev repeated Moscow's "principled position regarding the events in Syria and around it" and expressed the "hope that the reforms launched by Mr Assad will be implemented by the Syrian leadership dynamically and in a broad dialogue with the Syrian public".