Russia has blamed the United States for the resignation of Kofi Annan as the joint United Nations and Arab League envoy for the Syria crisis, Press TV reports.

“When yesterday the Washington Post came up with an article which was harshly critical of Kofi Annan, I think if the United States were really in support of the special envoy, the spokesman of the State Department could have said a few things in defense of the special envoy,” Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, told reporters after a UN Security Council briefing on Syria at the UN headquarters in New York City on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Annan quit his mandate as the special UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, blaming “finger-pointing and name-calling” at the UN Security Council for his decision.

Annan, who was appointed to the task on February 23, proposed a six-point peace plan to restore calm in Syria.

The proposal envisaged a ceasefire between foreign-backed insurgents and the Syrian government forces, a deal which went into effect in mid-April but failed to end the violence as the insurgents refused to lay down their arms.

Churkin also criticized foreign media for following a propaganda line in their coverage of the unrest in Syria. He specifically spoke of the media coverage of the situation in Aleppo and accused the foreign media of lacking objectivity.

Meanwhile, UN under-secretary for the peacekeeping operations Herve Ladsous admitted that the armed groups fighting Damascus have been provided with heavy weapons, including tanks.

“The opposition, yes, we know for a fact that the opposition does have heavy weapons- that we have seen. We have not yet seen the opposition in the action of using those heavy weapons against government forces but we know that they have tanks; that they have armored personnel carriers etcetera. That’s a fact,” Ladsous said.

Source: PressTV

Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images