Vladimir Putin cancels Paris trip as diplomatic crisis over Syria deepens

[MikeWB]

Vladimir Putin has cancelled a trip to Paris next week after the French government accused Russian and Syrian government forces of committing war crimes in Aleppo, amid a deepening diplomatic rift over the conflict there.

"The president has decided to cancel this visit," Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin's spokesman, said on Tuesday. 

"From the very start of his exchanges with his French colleague, President Putin noted that he is ready to visit Paris when it is comfortable for President Hollande. So we'll wait for when that comfortable time comes," he added.



Mr Putin had been due to visit Paris on October 19 to open a new Russian Orthodox cathedral and visit a Russian art exhibition in the French capital.

French diplomatic sources said the Kremlin pulled out after Mr Hollande refused to discuss anything at a planned bilateral meeting other than the Syrian crisis.

"There were contacts between the Kremlin and the Elysee this morning to offer to Putin a working visit on Syria, but excluding all other events that President Hollande could have taken part in," a source told Reuters.

On Monday Mr Hollande said he had not yet decided whether to host Mr Putin, saying that pro-government forces in Syria troops had committed a "war crime" in the city of Aleppo with Russian support.

"I asked myself the question... Is it useful? Is it necessary? Can it be a way of exerting pressure? Can we get him to stop what he is doing with the Syrian regime?" Mr Hollande said in a television interview.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, the  French foreign minister, said on Monday that France would ask prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in the Hague to consider an investigation into suspected Syrian and Russian war crimes.

Mr Ayrault visited Moscow last week for talks with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, in an attempt to win support at the UN for a French draft resolution for a ceasefire in Aleppo.



Russia vetoed the French resolution on Saturday, putting forward its own alternative resolution.

It marked the fifth time Russia has used its veto to block UN action to end the war in Syria.

Mr Hollande said was prepared to meet Mr Putin "at any time... to further peace" after the cancellation.

"Dialogue is necessary with Russia but it must be firm and frank," Mr Hollande said in Strasbourg.

The diplomatic confrontation over the Syrian civil war has plunged relations between Moscow and Western governments to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, warned on Monday that the crisis has brought the world to a "dangerous" point.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/11/putin-cancels-paris-trip-as-diplomatic-crisis-over-syria-deepens/