VOA - A senior Russian defense official said Moscow will no longer sell any weapons to Syria until the situation there calms down, as a Syrian activist group said the death toll from the Syrian conflict has surpassed 17,000.
Vyacheslav Dzirkaln, the deputy chief of the Russian military and technical cooperation agency, said Monday that Russia will not sign any more arms deals, deliver any more weapons or ship any spare parts for weapons delivered earlier.
The United States and other world leaders have pushed Russia to stop helping Damascus crackdown on the opposition there.
In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin said the Syrian government and the opposition groups should be forced to enter negotiations.
"I am convinced that we must do everything possible to force the conflicting sides to find a peaceful political solution to all the disputed issues," Putin told a group of Russian and foreign diplomats in televised remarks.
His comments came hours after his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, met with a senior Syrian opposition leader, Michel Kilo, in Moscow.