Russia has once again expressed opposition to foreign intervention in Syria and said that foreigners backing extremist oppositionists are hindering a peaceful solution to the nearly two-year-long Syrian crisis, Press TV reports.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the remarks on Monday in Moscow during a meeting with a delegation of the so-called National Coordination Committee for the Forces of Democratic Change (NCC), the official SANA news agency reported.
NCC is a Syrian opposition bloc led by Hassan Abdel Azim, comprised of 13 political parties and independent political activists.
"Since the beginning of the crisis, the foreign parties, which support the extremist opposition in Syria, have been trying to hinder any peaceful solution," Lavrov said.
The foreign funders of the extremist opposition groups do not want a political solution to the Syrian problem, the Russian foreign minister stated.
"Moscow is ready to work for starting dialogue between the opposition and the Syrian government," he added.
Lavrov praised NCC's efforts for "unifying the national opposition forces on the basis of being ready to hold dialogue with the government," describing this as "very significant contribution to the process which Russia tries to launch."
Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.
The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.
In an interview recently broadcast on German television, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that the government did not start the conflict and the militant groups were the ones killing Syrian citizens and destroying the country's infrastructure.