US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that sharp divisions remain with Moscow over Syria as she wrapped up an Asia tour in which she also made little headway with China on easing tensions in the South China Sea.
Mrs Clinton said she had made the case for increasing pressure on Syrian President Bashar al Assad in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but was pessimistic about the chances of closing the gap before the UN General Assembly this month.
"If we can make progress in New York in the run-up to the UN General Assembly, we can certainly try," Mrs Clinton told reporters in Vladivostok, where she attended a Pacific Rim summit hosted by Mr Putin.
"But we have to be realistic. We haven't seen eye-to-eye on Syria. That may continue. If it does continue then we will work with like-minded states to support the Syrian opposition to hasten the day when Assad falls."
On her 11-day Asia trip, Mrs Clinton sought to push for more forceful international steps on Syria, greater unity over Iran's nuclear programme and a multilateral mechanism for China to deal with maritime territorial disputes with its south-east Asian neighbours.
But the Chinese and Russians restated their opposition to what they see as US meddling. "Our US partners prefer measures like threats, increased pressure and new sanctions against both Syria and Iran. We do not agree with this in principle," Russia's Lavrov said after talks with Mrs Clinton.
Mr Putin said that although his talks with Mrs Clinton had been had been constructive and useful, they had yielded no agreements.
Mrs Clinton said she would continue to work with Mr Lavrov to see if the UN Security Council could formally endorse an agreement brokered by former UN Syria envoy Kofi Annan that envisages a transitional governing authority for Syria.
But she added that such a step would only be effective if it carried specific penalties if Mr Assad fails to comply, something Russia has repeatedly resisted.
"There's no point passing a resolution with no teeth because Assad will ignore it and keep attacking his own people," Mrs Clinton said.
When the agreement Russia wants the Security Council to endorse was reached in late June, it left open the question of what part Mr Assad might play in a Syrian political process. Russia says his exit must not be a precondition forced from outside.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article