Now Syria, it's a different story for many reasons. And I would not – I wouldn't really go
on explaining why if only for the importance Syria plays in the region and the connections with
so many regional aspects which are very important. Before even suggesting that the Security
Council should do something, the United States and the European Union introduced the
unilateral sanctions at once.

So – and then they said, well, we need to do something in the Security Council. There
was a European resolution – The French, British resolution – draft resolution, which basically
said that the entire situation in Syria is because Assad doesn't want to do anything. The
opposition is fine and Assad must, must, must.

On the basis of the information we have heard from our embassy, from other sources, we
knew that this is not entirely true. The opposition was not entirely peaceful. Among peaceful
demonstrators, who of course predominant, there were people who were armed and who were
provoking violence.

So we suggested that the international community in the form which was acceptable to
everyone should address both parties and should tell Assad, well, we heard you promised
yourself reform. This is right. But you must implement those reforms in practice faster. That's
exactly what President Medvedev told President Assad during the several phone conversations
during the last couple of months.

But we also have to tell the opposition, you should not provoke violence. You should not
resort to violence yourself. You should not count on the reputation of the Libyan scenario and
you should not ignore the proposals for dialogue, the proposals for discussions of reforms
coming from the government.

What was already done by President Assad was the removal of emergency law, which
had existed for decades in Syria. Two amnesties was announced – were announced. The
national dialogue was proposed, and I think started yesterday and it continues today, or rather it
should have finished yesterday, I think.

Maybe they continue. And it's good that considerable number of opposition forces,
parties came to that dialogue. The president of Syria proposed set of legal reforms, including
constitutional reform, including electoral reform, reform of the legislation on the media. This
should not be rejected.

This should be engaged because we have seen only too often the prevalence of the logic
of isolation over the logic of engagement, be it in Iran, be it in Syria in the past when Syria was
isolated from the mainstream of the Arab community. We've seen Hamas having been isolated
after it won free and fair democratic elections.

We have seen the attempts to isolate Hezbollah in Lebanon which brought nothing good
to this country. So as a matter of principle, we are against isolation. We are for engagement. At
the end of the day, the Iranian issue can only be resolved through engagement and that's what the
3-plus-3 group reiterated a month ago in its statement that we need an approach which is based
on a step-by-step logic and reciprocal logic.

So I think that we should act on Syria no less responsibly as we all act on Yemen. No
one is pulling Yemen, you know, into the Security Council. By the way, no one lifted a finger
when the presidential office was shelled by the rebels in Yemen, as the president almost being
killed and with the top government officials and parliament officials who had been on the
premises also wounded severely.

No one condemned this – I mean, in the Security Council. Individually several countries
did. But now in Yemen, the United States, Europe, Russia, the U.N., the Gulf Cooperation
Council – everyone is saying, well, you must sit down and talk to each other, you must discuss
this road map.

I think the Syrian situation is absolutely deserving the same treatment. Even in Libya,
things are moving in the same direction after the failure of the reliance on military solution
alone.