VK en Rusland botsen over Syrië in aanloop naar G8 (en)

BRUSSELS - Russian leader Vladimir Putin i has berated EU countries for planning to supply arms to human-heart-eating radicals in Syria.

Speaking at a press event in London with British Prime Minister David Cameron i on Sunday (16 June), Putin said: "I believe you will not deny the fact one hardly should back those who kill their enemies and, you know, eat their organs and all that is filmed and shot. Do we want to support these people? Do we want to supply arms to these people?"

He added: "It has hardly any relation to the communitarian and cultural values that Europe has been professing for centuries."

On Russia's own arms deliveries to the Syrian regime, he noted: "Russia supplies arms to the legitimate government of Syria in full compliance with the norms of international law. We are not breaching anything."

Putin was referring to a video circulated on the Internet in May showing Abu Sakar, a commander of the rebel Farouq Brigade, cutting out and biting into the heart of a dead soldier.

Amid bewildering propaganda and counter-propaganda in the two-year-long civil war, leading NGOs, such as the US-based Human Rights Watch, have said the clip is authentic.

Sakar himself admitted he did it to Western media.

Putin spoke after Britain and France last month engineered the lifting of an EU arms embargo on Syria.

They have promised not to ship weapons unless peace talks - expected in Geneva in August or September - fail.

But the US last week said it plans to give rebels "military support" now because US intelligence has evidence that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is using chemical weapons.

Cameron on Sunday said his arms gambit is designed to help the moderate wing of the opposition.

He noted: "We, I believe rightly, changed the terms of the EU arms embargo, because it was almost as if it was saying there was some sort of equivalence between Assad on the one hand and the official Syrian opposition on the other, and I don't believe there is."

He added: "The Syrian opposition have committed to a democratic, pluralistic Syria that will respect minorities, including Christians."

He also tried to salvage prospects of a united diplomatic effort to make the Syria peace talks happen.

"We [Russia and theUK] both see a humanitarian catastrophe; we both see the dangers of instability and extremism; we both want to see a peace conference and a transition," he told press alongside the Russian leader.

The two men's remarks did little to quell fears of a worst-case scenario in the Middle East: a proxy war between Iran and Russia on one side, EU countries and the US on the other side and a third element of Gulf Arab states arming Sunni Muslim extremists.

"I sincerely hope that discussions at G8 i meeting can bridge widening gap on Syria policy. No one should for wish arms race and proxy war," Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt Tweeted on Monday morning, referring to today's meeting of the G8 club of leading nations in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.

But for his part, Canadian Prime Minister David Harper poured fuel on the new fire of Western-Russian division.

He told press on Sunday that: "Mr Putin and his government are supporting the thugs of the Assad regime for their own reasons that I do not think are justifiable."

He added that "we're not going to get a common position with him at the G8" on the Syria war.

He also voiced long-standing feeling in some Western capitals that Russia's membership in the G8 - whose other members are all liked-minded liberal democracies Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US - is an anomaly.

"I don't think we should fool ourselves. This is G7 i plus one. OK, let's be blunt. That's what this is, G7 plus one," he said.