Russian Federation says United States will want dialogue after Syria strikes: agencies
- by Thibaud Popelin
- in Monde
- — Avr 16, 2018
"I hope no one would dare to launch such an adventure now", Lavrov said.
The coordinated strikes were in response to the Syrian regime's chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma, which allied governments say killed at least 60 people and left hundreds more injured over the weekend.
Later on Saturday, the Syrian presidency posted a video that appeared to show President Bashar al-Assad arriving for work hours after the strike.
"The US - the possessor of the biggest arsenal of chemical weapons - has no moral right to blame other countries", he added.
Worldwide investigators from the global chemical weapons watchdog are in Syria and were due to start their inquiry on Saturday into the suspected toxic gas attack.
Syria and its ally Russia have denied such an attack took place, and Moscow has accused Britain of helping to stage the Douma incident to stoke anti-Russian hysteria. Both the Russian military and the Syrian government said they would facilitate the mission and ensure the inspectors' security.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Saturday that Moscow received the confidential information from the laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland, that analyzed samples from the site of the March 4 poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.
While a full assessment has not yet been completed, "we believe that the action was successful", she said.
It is noted that according to the officials of the security sector, the British government communications Centre (GCHQ, the intelligence Agency responsible for protecting the public value and electronic intelligence - ed.) will "continue to expose the unacceptable behaviour of Russian Federation in cyberspace".
In a reference to the USA, he said that it "it would only benefit those who are protected by the ocean and expect to sit there and engage in continuous efforts to stir up the region in order to advance their geopolitical goals".
Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced joint American, British, and French missile strikes on Syria as "an act of aggression against a sovereign state" and said he would seek an emergency meeting of the United Nations' Security Council. The government, however, said evacuations from Douma were ongoing and no Syrian government forces had entered the town. Smoke could be seen rising from the northern and eastern edges of the capital.
The Russian ambassador to the United States railed against the US-led coalition campaign against suspected Syrian chemical weapons facilities.
