THESSALONIKI. July 4 (Interfax) - The culprits of a humanitarian disaster in Syria and Iraq, who have demolished the statehood in these countries with their forcible interference, must be held liable for this, State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin said.
"This [the situation in Syria and Iraq] is a real humanitarian catastrophe, for which those who by their bomb strikes and the armed ground intervention have methodically ruined the statehood of these countries, seeded chaos and seeded death among civilians in the Middle Eastern countries must bear liability," Naryshkin, who is currently on a working visit in Thessaloniki, told reporters on Monday.
Later on Monday, Naryshkin will attend an official opening ceremony of the 23rd General Assembly of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy.
The format of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy "enables looking at many international problems from the special angle, from the point of view of Christian values, which unite billions of people in the world," the State Duma speaker said.
"For instance, the exodus problem of the Christians from the countries of the Middle Eastern region is becoming extremely serious," he said.
"Since the start of the military conflict in Syria nearly a million Christians left this country, and in Iraq since 2003, the time of the U.S. military intervention, which resulted in several hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens falling victims of this, the Christian community has shrunken tenfold," Naryshkin said.
"Certainly, this is suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, women, children, elderly people, who, in fact, have to search for a new home for themselves," Naryshkin said.