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Russian Foreign
Ministry official Mikhail Bogdanov was quoted by Interfax news
agency on Tuesday as saying delegations from the Free Syrian
Army had visited Moscow several times, including this week, amid
heightened diplomacy on Syria.
The Free Syrian Army is a loose alliance of rebel groups, some
of them recipients of military support from President Bashar
al-Assad's foreign enemies. It does not operate with a
centralized command structure.
"This talk is not correct," said Ahmed al-Seoud, head of the
FSA-affiliated 13th Division group, which operates in areas of
western Syria being attacked by Russian warplanes.
The spokesman for Alwiyat Seif al-Sham, an FSA group operating
in southern Syria, said: "Nothing of this sort happened on our
part as FSA. It is impossible for us to accept going to Moscow,
and to have dialogue with it. We don’t want their help."
"We contacted our friends in other areas and nobody went," added
the spokesman, Abu Ghiath al-Shami.
The main Western-backed political opposition, the National
Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, also
denied such visits in a statement posted on its website.
"The Syrian Coalition considers these claims a part of the
Russian misleading propaganda that aims at diverting attention
from failures of the Russian aggression on the Syrian people,"
the Turkey-based organization said.
(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Catherine Evans)
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