Russia says Nato plotting against Assad

Russia’s security council chief accused Nato countries and oil-rich Gulf states of hatching a plot to implement a “Libyan scenario” in Syria and bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The allegations by Nikolai Patrushev echoed the siege mentality of Russia’s KGB-trained security elite but also indicate that Russia is trying to pre-empt calls for intervention against its strongest Arab ally.

The comments came amid fears that an Arab League monitoring mission in Syria is headed for failure, opening the way for Arab states to intensify pressure for UN Security Council intervention.

The mission, which is supposed to oversee the implementation of a plan to end a crackdown on a 10-month uprising against the regime, has been dogged by controversy. Syria’s opposition says it is providing cover for the regime to pursue its security campaign.

Some senior officials in the Arab world already signal that the mission has failed and say other ways to put pressure on the regime are under discussion between regional and western governments.

Although there is no appetite for military intervention in Syria along the lines of the Nato mission in Libya, there have been reports of an informal contact group forming to co-ordinate policy about Syria. The contact group is said to include Gulf states, Turkey, the US and leading European powers.

Moscow’s anxiety might have been heightened by meetings this week between Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and her Saudi and Qatari counterparts. After talks with Qatar’s Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who is also the prime minister, Mrs Clinton said the Arab League mission in Syria could not continue indefinitely.

“We are receiving information that Nato members and some Persian Gulf states, working under the ‘Libyan scenario’, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syria to direct military intervention,” said Mr Patrushev, a former KGB counter intelligence officer. He added that the US and Turkey were working on a possible no-fly zone to protect Syrian rebels.

“This time, it won’t be France, the UK and Italy that will provide the main strike forces but perhaps neighbouring Turkey, which was until recently on good terms with Syria and is a rival of Iran with immense ambitions,” he said.

Turkish officials have said that there are no such plans. A French proposal to form humanitarian corridors in Syria has failed to gain traction.

Russia’s ruling elite has become increasingly suspicious of the west after anti-government demonstrations broke out in Moscow, following rigged parliamentary elections in December.

Moscow has offered robust diplomatic support to Damascus, as well, it appears, as arms supplies. A Russian ship, the Chariot, was stopped in Cyprus and ordered to change course after authorities boarded and found containers of weapons and ammunition bound for Syria on Monday. The European Union has imposed a ban on weapons shipments to Syria. However, this does not apply to Russia. The Turkish foreign ministry said on Thursday that the ship arrived in Syria after it was allowed to leave Cypriot waters.

Russian state television broadcast images on Monday of the Admiral Kuznetsov, a Russian aircraft carrier, docked in Syria’s Tartus port for resupply. Russian authorities said it was a long-planned stop on a scheduled voyage around the Mediterranean. The carrier and support ships reportedly left Syrian waters on Tuesday.

In addition to the Kremlin’s world view, Russian policymakers have more substantive objections to western support for the Arab uprisings across the Middle East. They fear that upheaval is bringing Islamist extremists to power and accuse the US of being blind to the steady gains by radicals in post-revolutionary Egypt and Libya.

“In Syria, after the fall of Assad, we will see millions of refugees, hundreds of thousands of killed, and the guaranteed end of the Christian community,” said Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Moscow Institute of Near Eastern Studies, an independent think-tank. Mr Satanovsky said he was “100 per cent sure” that the Syrian president would fall. “The only question is whether it will be fast or slow.”

Mr Satanovsky said Mr Patrushev’s analysis on Thursday reflected “the elements of his KGB training” but that it was reasonable to suppose that such a scenario was likely for Syria.