West blasted for 'cynical' stance on Middle East

MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday hit out at the West's "cynical" stance on Syria and warned against strikes on Iran in an article published ahead of his likely return to the Kremlin in weekend polls.

The tone of Putin's messages echoed the diplomatic battles he waged as president from 2000 to 2008 and may only feed concerns about Russia's policies on his return for a six-year term in Sunday's election.

Russia's current prime minister strongly defended Moscow's decision to jointly with China veto two UN Security Council draft resolutions condemning the Syrian government for its crackdown on the opposition.

He accused the West of "lacking the patience to work out an adjusted and balanced" resolution that also required the resistance forces to halt their fire and pull back from flashpoint cities such as Homs.

"All that remained was to demand that the armed opposition do the same as the government - namely, withdraw their fighting units and detachments from the cities," Putin wrote in the Moskovskiye Novosti daily.

"A refusal to do so was cynical," Putin said in his seventh and final article released ahead of the vote.

Putin suggested that the West's support for the revolts may have been rooted in commercial interests.

"It seems that in countries that went through the revolts - just as had been the case in Iraq - Russia ended up losing its position on local markets that it had worked on developing for decades," said Putin.

"One can get the idea that these tragic events were to a certain extent stimulated not by concern for human rights but by someone's market interests."

AFP-China Daily