US AND UK FIND COMMON GROUND WITH RUSSIA ON SYRIA

       Washington, 4 Rajab 1434/14 May 2013 (MINA) – The United States and Britain say they have found common ground with Russia on how to proceed on Syria.

       At a meeting in Washington on Monday, US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron promised to make diplomatic efforts to find a political solution to the two-year crisis in Syria.

       “Syria’s history is being written in the blood of her people, and it is happening on our watch,” Cameron told reporters at a joint press conference with Obama after they held a 90-minute meeting in the White House.

        “The world urgently needs to come together to bring the killing to an end. None of us have any interest in seeing more lives lost, in seeing chemical weapons used,” the British prime minister stated.

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         Cameron, who held “very substantive, very purposeful and very useful” talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on May 10, said he believed Washington, London, and Moscow had found “common ground” on the crisis.

         According to Press TV report quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA), Obama agreed with Cameron, saying, “As a leader on the world stage, Russia has an interest, as well as an obligation,” to work on resolving the crisis.

        However, Obama and Cameron showed their hand when they said that the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must end.

        “If in fact we can broker a peaceful political transition that leads not only to Assad’s departure but a state in Syria that is still intact (…) and that ends the bloodshed, stabilizes the situation, that’s not just going to be good for us — that will be good for everybody,” the US president stated.

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       The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

       The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

       In an interview broadcast on Turkish television on April 5, Assad said that if the militants take power in Syria, they could destabilize the entire Middle East region for decades.

       “If the unrest in Syria leads to the partitioning of the country, or if the terrorist forces take control… the situation will inevitably spill over into neighboring countries and create a domino effect throughout the Middle East and beyond,” he stated.(T/P05/E1)

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Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)