Remarks made by British Prime Minister David Cameron and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference on Sunday reflected serious disagreement between the two on arming rebels fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Putin is currently in Britain to participate in Monday's G8 summit in Northern Ireland, which is expected to be dominated by the ongoing Syrian civil war as well as tax transparency and global economic problems.
Addressing a joint press conference with Putin after talks they had ahead of the G8 summit, Cameron blamed the Assad regime for the two-year-old crisis in Syria. He also defended the lifting of EU arms sanctions against the Syrian rebels, stressing that no decision had yet been made on whether the UK will supply them with weapons.
Cameron said that the "responsibility lies with Assad and the onslaught that he created with his people." He said "new evidence makes that clearer than ever," apparently referring to the recent claims made by the United States that it has proof to show that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against the rebels.
In response, Putin warned the West against arming the Syrian rebels and strongly rejected Cameron's earlier remarks that those arming the Damascus regime had the "blood of the children of Syria" on their hands.
"The blood is on the hands of both parties. There is always a question as to who is to blame. One should hardly back those who kill enemies and eat their organs," the Russian President said, referring to a Internet video footage showing a rebel fighter eating the heart of a dead government soldier.
Putin also defended his government's decision to supply arms to the Syrian regime, saying that the Russian move to provide arms to "the legitimate government of Syria in full compliance with the norms of international law."
Cameron, in turn, acknowledged that he and Putin had "disagreements on some of the issues" linked to their response to the Syrian conflict, but stressed that both of them shared a common desire to end the crisis with a negotiated diplomatic settlement.
"What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome differences if we recognize that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people choose who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists. If we leave Syria to be fought over between a murderous dictator and violent extremists we will all pay the price," he said.
In response, Putin said: "Eventually we will solve the problem and put all parties at the negotiating table with joint efforts. This is one of the most appropriate solutions to the problem, and it can be solved only through political and diplomatic means."
At least 93,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since an armed rebellion against the Assad regime began in Syria in March 2011. The conflict is now threatening to spill over to neighboring nations and increasingly becoming sectarian in nature.
International efforts at finding a solution to the crisis have been hampered by a deep divide in the U.N. Security Council, with Russia and China backing the Assad regime and the West opposing it. Notably, the latest developments come amid efforts aimed at convincing the rebels and the Syrian government to attend an international conference planned jointly by Russia and the United States to find a political solution to the conflict.
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