Интервью Постоянного представителя Российской Федерации при ООН В.И.Чуркина каналу Си-Эн-Эн
CNN Interview with Ambassador Churkin 26.11.2013
AMANPOUR:
Welcome to the program, Ambassador. Thanks for joining me.
VITALY IVANOVICH CHURKIN, PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION TO
THE UNITED NATIONS: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: So here we have again the attempt to get a peace process on the way
for Syria. But we don't even know who's actually going.
Is that a little alarming? Even the special envoy couldn't say who's actually
going from all the parties involved.
CHURKIN: Well, this is precisely the problem. And this is the reason why it has
not been possible to convene the conference until this point.
And only yesterday the secretary-general was able to announce January 22 as the
date for the convening of the conference.
But still, work needs to be done about the opposition, because there is no
unity among the opposition. And various opposition groups do not recognize the
right of the national coalition, which is usually referred to as the logical
representative of the Syrian opposition, as their representative.
And of course for the conference to be successful, not only the opposition
groups need to be constructively engaged, but also there must be acceptance
among them that they are well represented.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
CHURKIN: So some work still needs to be done. And we are participating in this
work, because even though the United States said that they are going -- they
were going to bring the opposition to the table, we're also in the process of
talking with various opposition groups in order to make sure that they do come
to Geneva, they do come as united as possible and they talk constructively on
the basis of the Geneva communique of 2012.
AMANPOUR: Well, if you had to bet right now, this peace conference is scheduled
for about two months away, do you think it'll happen?
And do you think it'll be meaningful?
I mean, uniting the opposition has been attempted for the last 2.5 years.
Do you think there will be a meaningful conference?
CHURKIN: I -- you know, my gut feeling is that it is going to happen this time
unless there is a major provocation. And what is disturbing is that we here
again return to this conversation of changing things on the ground before the
conference takes place.
So the danger now is an effort by the opposition to reverse the military
situation and to have some military gains and then things can go badly. And in
the absence of unity among the opposition, then the convening of the conference
may be at risk.
So now everybody should act with extreme responsibility and prudence and focus on the political track of preparing themselves for the conference rather than on the military track
AMANPOUR: All right. You talk about the military track and the opposition; well, obviously also President Assad has very powerful friends, including you and Iran. And there is a lot of military activity on his side as well. We’ve just been reported about terrible humanitarian situation there. Do you think that the Geneva communique with you and US and world powers agreed had to see a transitional Governement?
Is President Assad expected to be
part of a post-conference reality?
Or does the peace proposal envision him
leaving power somehow after a peace deal?
CHURKIN: Well, of course, there is
nothing about him leaving power in the Geneva communique which is going to be
the basis of the negotiations.
But our answer to your question is that the
Syrians must decide that themselves. They know that there is a Geneva
communique; they know that. They need to talk about political transition. They
know that they need to put together a transitional body by mutual agreement,
including agreeing on the personalities.
What is going to happen after that remains to be
seen after they have had a chance to get into the negotiations with the support,
hopefully, of key members of the international community. Russian support is
going to be there, both for the government and for constructive participation
of the opposition.
AMANPOUR: Do you agree that Assad’s role is up for negotiation? Do you think that if he wants he can keep staying?
CHURKIN: This is something that Syrians will decide. You referred to his military power, this is true. He does have strong military at his disposal, but also it’a fact of life that many Syrians, large segment of the Syrian population is supporting President Assad that also has to be taken into account. So let’s have the dialogue started and let’s allow the Syrians to decide what kind of path they need to take to end this conflict.
AMANPOUR: As you know the FSA - Syrian opposition forces - say “We are not going, we’ll continue fighting, we are not going to this conference”. But Syrian national council has dropped its former opposition to Assad, stepping down before such a meeting, saying we can go ahead. That’s a movement from them. But they also say that one of their conditions is to have proper international access in a humanitarian way. Can your government at least use its good offices to make sure that happen. Is it a desperate situation in Syria right now?
CHURKIN: First of all I do not like the word “conditions”, let’s not make any conditions, let’s focus on the talks in Geneva because one can set up all sorts of conditions. The humanitarian situation is certainly of great concern and the Russian government has been working very closely with international community and with the Syrian government in order to improve things. And some things have improved. For instance there have been complains from the humanitarian community about overly complicated bureaucratic procedures from the Syrian government, that has been corrected. The Syrian government has approved some the setting up new hubs in Syria to simplify the provision of humanitarian assistance. Today we are participating in Geneva in the high level group which has been convened by UN humanitarian agencies and we hope all the participants in that group which incidentally includes Iran and Saudi Arabia have been invited. I don’t know if the Saudis are going to attend. The Iranians are certainly going to attend, they assured us. That group can also deal pragmatically with the situation on the ground because we have some influence with the Syrian government but nobody knows who is influencing those hundreds or dozens at least of powerful armed groups on the ground from preventing making humanitarian activity very difficult. We need to identify those countries and they need to assume responsibility for dealing with those groups so that they will not prevent the evacuation of the population from besieged areas. Because over the past few months there has been a number of situations when the Syrian government agreed to the evacuation of the population but the opposition groups prevented that from happening. And incidentally an interesting note: whenever the population is leaving various besieged areas they move to the territories controlled by the Syrian government. So I think it tells a lot about whom the population is relying on for providing humanitarian support.
AMANPOUR: Given the fact that in
Geneva the world powers just signed an interim nuclear deal with Iran, is Iran
invited to this Geneva 2 conference on Syria?
And is that presence accepted by the United
States and the other parties?
CHURKIN: This is one of important issues because
we believe that Iran should be invited. Kofi Annan, when he was special envoy of
the secretary-general believed that Iran should be invited.
Now both Ban Ki-moon and Lakhdar Brahimi,
secretary-general of the United Nations and special representative of the secretary-general
for Syria, believe that Iran should be invited.
But the United States is against. We think it
makes no sense because now the nuclear deal has been made; and the United
States engaged Iran both multilaterally and bilaterally. And then, you know,
whether Iran is in the room or not, it's going to be a player in Syria.
So it's better to have it in the room; it's
better to have its support, the deals which we hope will be reached, in Geneva
rather than alienate Iran once again. That mistake has been made a number of
times before; let's not repeat it in the context of the Geneva 2 conference.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you then on the --
specifically the nuclear issue, as you can see, this deal has been signed, has
created a storm of opposition in Israel, in some parts of the Arab world, in
the U.S. Congress.
What can you say about your confidence that this
deal will be kept to, that Iran won't break out, that there is sufficient
verification?
Do you feel that?
CHURKIN: Yes, we do. You know, because it's not
a rhetorical deal. It's something which is setting in train (ph) very important
steps from Iran and the international community and cooperation with Iran.
The nuclear program of Iran, the enrichment
program will essentially be not stopped but sort of not developed any further
and, in some cases, turned back. What I'm referring to is the intention of Iran
to dilute some of the uranium which was enriched to 20 percent.
New verification measures are being put in
place. A joint commission is going to be established between the six and Iran
involving IAEA and its inspectors.
So this is -- I mean, the paper has been
released. It's a pretty detailed and very serious deal which I believe is a
great achievement, both for the six and for Iran and it's particularly
important that we are finally talking in practical terms and there is a real
opportunity here to get rid of this specter of Iranian nuclear weapon.
And if this is to happen -- and we believe that
there is a very good chance of that -- then this threat to Israel, which has
been hanging over their heads for such a long time, will be taken care
of.
So I think that the Israelis and other doubters
should give everybody an opportunity, those who are involved in the actual
negotiations, to move ahead on this deal. And that might turn around the entire
situation in the bigger region. It will have a positive impact on Syria; will
hopefully have a positive impact on the Israeli-Palestinian track and the
entire situation of the Middle East.
So we're really at a crucial point now. And we
are very pleased and encouraged that we are beginning to turn away from the
logic of confrontation on the use of military force to dialogue and
involvement. This is something which Russia has been advocating for a long
time.
AMANPOUR: Ambassador Churkin, thank you very
much indeed for joining me.
CHURKIN:
Thank you, Christiane.