'Russia isn't clinging to Assad'

(MENAFN- Arab News) MOSCOW: Russia isn't committed to keeping Syrian President Bashar Assad in power the leader of the main Syrian opposition group said Friday after talks in Moscow.

Speaking a day after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Syrian National Coalition president Khaled Khoja said that 'the Russian leadership isn't clinging to Bashar Assad' and is focusing on the need to preserve Syria's territorial integrity.
It wasn't immediately clear whether Khoja's statement signaled a shift in Russia's stance or merely reflected Moscow's attempt to rally Syrian opposition support for its new push to help mediate the conflict.
Khoja reaffirmed Friday that Assad and his top lieutenants couldn't be part of a transitional government. He said he and the Russians didn't discuss any candidates for the future interim authority adding that his group and Moscow will continue consultations.
Khoja said Russia's main focus was the need to preserve Syria's territorial integrity and avoid the collapse of the country's state structures adding that he offered assurances that the National Coalition stands for preserving state institutions.
Lavrov also met separately Friday with exiled Syrian opposition figure Haitham Manna.
Meanwhile the international charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) accused the Syrian government on Friday of systematically bombing hospitals in rebel-held areas.
MSF said strikes against hospitals by Syrian warplanes had killed 11 people including three hospital workers in the northwesterly Idlib province in the past week and wounded 31 others.
'The incidents that happened in the last few days in Idlib clearly were by planes with missiles and it's very very clear by the damage that this was intentional and targeted' MSF's head of mission for Syria Sylvain Groulx said by telephone. 'It's completely contrary to international law.'
Most of Idlib province has fallen this year to a coalition of insurgents who have been gaining ground as they press west toward President Bashar Assad's coastal heartland. The provincial capital fell in March.
'After the fall of Idlib (city) immediately the major hospitals that were still standing at the time were bombarded by government warplanes' Groulx said.
He said all sides fighting in the more than 4-year-old civil war which has killed a quarter of a million people were responsible for attacks on health care facilities but the majority had been carried out by government forces.