U.S. has harsh words for Russia

Russia’s inaction in Syria could spark a civil war, Hillary Clinton warns.

Secretary of WASHINGTON — State Hillary Rodham Clinton signaled the Obama administration’s mounting frustration with Russia over the unending violence in Syria on Thursday, saying that Russia’s refusal to take decisive action against President Bashar Assad threatened to precipitate the very civil war that Russian diplomats have said they wanted to avoid.

“I think they are, in effect, propping up the regime at a time when we should be working on a political transition,” she said during a news conference in Copenhagen.

Clinton’s remarks, while not the harshest she has aimed at the Russians over Syria, came as the administration has made an effort to win Russian cooperation on a plan to negotiate Assad’s departure while leaving the state’s structures in place. The effort is based on the transition now under way in Yemen, where after months of unrest, President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to hand control to his vice president.

Clinton said that she had held “numerous conversations” focused on Russia’s role in Syria in recent days, but the Russians had shown little willingness to abandon Assad even in an orderly, negotiated settlement. Instead, she said, they cite the violent history of civil war in neighboring Lebanon.

“The Russians keep telling us they want to do everything they can to avoid a civil war, because they believe that the violence would be catastrophic,” she said. “They often, in their conversations with me, liken it to the equivalent of a very large Lebanese civil war, and they are just vociferous in their claim that they are providing a stabilizing influence. I reject that.”