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President Bashar al-Assad's chances of staying in power are "shrinking by the day", the Russian prime minister has said in the country's sternest criticism of the Syrian regime.
Mr Assad made a "grave, perhaps fatal error" in his failure to initiate political reform earlier, said Dmitri Medvedev.
"He should have acted much more quickly and reached out to the peaceful opposition, which was ready to sit at the negotiating table with him," he said.
"It seems to me that his chances of staying are shrinking day by day."
Mr Medvedev said a compromise had to be found in Syria that did not lead to Mr Assad being "executed like Gaddafi or carried to court sessions on a stretcher like Hosni Mubarak". (© Daily Telegraph, London)
Irish Independent
