Moscow-supplied Yakhonts guided missiles could be used to fight any seaborne intervention attempt by US and the west Julian Borger, and Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Friday 17 May 2013 18.17 BST
Sergei Lavrov defended the sale of guided missiles to Syria. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP
Russia has defended its arms sales to Syria as being for purely defensive purposes after reports that Moscow had delivered advanced anti-ship missiles to the Damascus regime.
While not directly confirming the reported arrival of Russian Yakhonts missiles, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Moscow's weapons sales would "not in any way alter the balance of forces in this region or give any advantage in the fight against the opposition".
The missiles supplied to Bashar al-Assad's forces, which according to the New York Times were equipped with an advanced guidance system, appeared designed to deter any seaborne western intervention. Experts said it would be a potent weapon against any – presumably US-led – effort to enforce a naval embargo or conduct air strikes with ship-launched missiles.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Russia had built up its naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean and now has a dozen or more warships off the Syrian coast, one of the largest such deployments since the cold war.
The Russian military moves signalled Moscow's determination to back the Assad regime and dampened hopes of a new international peace conference on Syria, involving both the government and the rebels, agreed in principle earlier this month by Lavrov and Kerry.
In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "Russia has acknowledged publicly that it provides weapons to Assad. We condemn activity which allows the regime to slaughter its own people."
David Cameron and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, both lobbied President Vladimir Putin on Friday to help organise a peace conference as soon as possible.
"The [prime minister] made clear his support for the US-Russia initiative to hold a peace conference as soon as possible and said that the UK was willing to do all it could to help," a Downing Street spokesman said.
"We should not lose the momentum," Ban said, during a visit to Russia. "There is a high expectation that this meeting should be held as soon as possible." Lavrov agreed, saying the sooner the better, after an earlier meeting with Ban.
The sticking point so far has been the rebels' insistence they will not talk to Assad. Moscow has been adamant there should be no preconditions to talks. Russia and Iran have given large-scale military support to Damascus, while the US and western Europe have so far held back from supplying arms to the rebels, who have instead received intermittent support from Gulf Arab states.
Britain and France will this month try to persuade the European Union to lift its arms embargo to allow weapons deliveries to the opposition but will meet significant resistance to such a move in Brussels.
Meanwhile the new CIA chief, John Brennan, met the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, defence minister, Moshe Ya'alon, military chief of staff, Benny Gantz, and Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, according to reports in Israel media. The unannounced meetings followed two Israeli air strikes on weapons stores near Damascus a fortnight ago.
Israel has repeatedly warned it will take action to prevent advanced or chemical weapons being transferred to the Syrian regime's Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, or falling into the hands of jihadist groups fighting alongside the Syrian opposition.
According to a report in the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth, the visit stemmed from "the American fear of escalation in the region against the backdrop of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah's threats to act against Israel in the Golan Heights and the American sense that Israel is disappointed by the ineffectuality of the Obama administration with regard to the ongoing deterioration in Syria.
"It is assessed that Brennan was sent to Israel to co-ordinate a joint policy between the two countries and prevent Israel from taking action on its own in Syria."
The Syrian government has warned that it will retaliate against further military action by Israel, which would risk embroiling the US ally in a regional conflict.
Two shells landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights this week. A liitle-known Palestinian group, the Abdul Qader al-Husseini brigades, said it had fired the missiles, which if true, would make it the first time Israeli-controlled territory had been targeted. "We are avenging all our martyrs that we lost in our war with the Zionist enemy," the brigades said.
Three observers with Undof, the UN peacekeeping force in the Golan, were abducted by Syrian opposition forces and later released on Wednesday, the third such incident in the past two months.
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