MOSCOW. April 23 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia disagrees with the plans of the United States to impose unilateral sanctions against Syria for alleged support of terrorism.
"We are convinced that such measures are used as a means of political pressure. We cannot agree with such an approach," Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov told Interfax on Friday.
He said this is not the first time Washington has accused Damascus of supporting terrorism. "This time the American administration is planning to impose unilateral sanctions in keeping with a bill recently adopted by Congress on the responsibility of Syria," he said.
"We want to draw attention to the fact that Syria has demonstrated on many occasions its loyalty to the joint efforts of the international community against terrorism," Trubnikov said.
"The Syrian leadership has assured us that it is not rendering assistance to certain extremist or terrorist groups that the United States believes Syria supports," he said.
"I want to repeat that the solution of the problem for the benefit of stability and security in the region can be sought only through a constructive dialogue. As far as we know, Damascus has expressed a readiness for such a dialogue," Trubnikov said.
Commenting on similar U.S. accusations regarding Iran, he said: "As for Iran, here again we do not see reasons to believe that it is involved in supporting international terrorism."
"We do not have any evidence of it whatsoever. On the contrary, we know that during the past few years, Iran has been consistently acting on the international arena denouncing terrorism as a global threat to peace and security," he said.
"It is indicative that in the framework of the high-level dialogue, Iran told us that some 500 al-Qaeda members have been detained on its territory. The Iranians assured us that after the investigation, persons who committed no crimes against Iran would be expelled to the countries where they came from," Trubnikov said.
He said Russia also sympathizes with Tehran's call "to refrain from unilateral discriminatory measures in the framework of resisting terrorism, in particular against the concepts of humanitarian intervention and restricted sovereignty justifying the use of force in circumvention of the UN Charter, in particular."