Report: Russia says US is arming Syria rebels

Russia's Foreign Minister defended his country's sale of arms to Syria Wednesday and accused the United States of supplying rebels with weapons to fight against the government, Reuters reported.

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"We are not violating any international law in performing these contracts," Reuters quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying in response to a question about arms sales to Syria at a news conference in Tehran shown on Iranian state television.

"They (the United States) are providing arms and weapons to the Syrian opposition that can be used in fighting against the Damascus government," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

Neither his comments, nor the translation, could immediately be verified by other news sources.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti noted that Russia is the biggest supplier of arms to Syria, and maintains its only military base outside the former Soviet Union there. It said Russia President Vladimir Putin earlier this month claimed Russian arms were not being used against pro-democracy protesters in Syria, a claim derided as "patently untrue" by U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

Russia, which is resisting Western and Gulf Arab pressure to take a tougher stance toward Assad, says a proposed conference would lend support to a peace plan by U.N. international mediator Kofi Annan.

The U.S. says it does not believe Iran, Assad's strongest regional ally, is ready to play a constructive role in Syria. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week that it was "hard to imagine inviting a country that is stage-managing the Assad regime's assault on its people."

On Monday, U.N. monitors said Syrian helicopters had fired on rebel strongholds north of Homs and said many women and children were reported trapped in the city, calling for "immediate and unfettered access" to the conflict zones.

International mediator Kofi Annan also expressed grave concern about violence in Homs and in Haffeh, a mainly Sunni Muslim town near the Mediterranean coast, where the U.S. State Department said it feared a "potential massacre".

The U.N. observers, tasked with monitoring Annan's April ceasefire deal which failed to stem the violence in Syria, have instead been cataloguing mass killings, bombings and clashes in which many hundreds of Syrians have died.

The outside world, divided in its approach towards Assad's crackdown on a 15-month-old uprising, has been unable to halt the violence despite broad international support for Annan's peace plan.

It was the first time the U.N. monitors have verified repeated allegations by activists that Assad's forces have fired from helicopters in the military crackdown on rebels.

Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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