Moscow hopeful U.S. will stop short of imposing sanctions on Syria

The Russian Foreign Ministry does not rule out the possibility of the United States suspending the introduction of economic sanctions against Syria.

The bill on the sanctions has yet to get through the Senate, Nikolai Trutsuk, deputy to the official spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a comment on the draft's approval by the House of Representatives. Even if the Senate, too, passes the bill, the U.S. President may stop short of signing it into law, he said.

"Such experiments are of unilateral character; they are about interior legislative acts of the U.S., meaning that they are not of a supra-national nature, and may not therefore serve as a source of international law," the diplomat pointed out.

"But one cannot deny that legislative activity like this has a certain impact not just on the bilateral relationship of the U.S. with Syria, but also on the situation in the Mideastern region at large, which, as is known, has deteriorated dramatically in recent months," Trutsuk said.

"We are deeply convinced that if any difficulties arise in a bilateral relationship, they should be settled above all within the framework of a political dialogue."