MUNICH: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said all powers must sit at the negotiating table to forge an end to the war in Syria “instead of unleashing a new world war”.

“The Americans and our Arab partners must think well: do they want a permanent war?” Medvedev told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper, due to be published on Friday. It would be impossible to win such a war quickly, he said according to a German translation of his words, “especially in the Arab world, where everybody is fighting against everybody”.

“All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table instead of unleashing a new world war,” he said.

He said the United States and Russia must exert pressure on all sides in the conflict in order to secure a ceasefire.

Russia said it had made a “quite specific” proposal for a ceasefire in Syria as foreign ministers gathered in Munich on Thursday in a bid to kickstart peace talks derailed by the regime onslaught on the city of Aleppo.

“We made propositions for a ceasefire that are quite specific,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said as he sat down for talks with US counterpart John Kerry.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2016

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