STRELNA (near St. Petersburg), July 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's President Vladimir Putin called Sunday for efforts to work with Iran and encourage it to positively influence the situation in the Middle East.
"Iran is, of course, an influential country in the region and its interests must be respected to ... prompt it to use its influence to change the situation for the better," Putin told a news conference on day two of Russia's debut G8 summit.
Putin said the G8 member countries had drafted a resolution on the Middle East out of a desire to prevent the conflict from escalating.
"In our view, no one will win from this [an escalation]," he said. "And no matter how certain forces might want to use more military capabilities, we all know what happened in the past and no one wants a return to that."
