Russia is not discussing Bashar Assad with the United States, a deputy foreign minister said Wednesday after a report said the West was pushing Moscow to offer the Syrian president exile.

"The situation with the future of Syrian President Bashar Assad is not being discussed with the United States," Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency.

Western nations led by the United States are seeking to persuade Russia to host President Bashar Assad in exile as a way out of the escalating Syria crisis, a Russian newspaper report said Wednesday.

But Moscow so far has not been receptive to the idea, even though Kremlin sources put Assad's chances of political survival at "10 percent,” the Kommersant daily said.

Fears that the Syrian crisis could spill over to other countries in the region and mainly Lebanon haven’t dissipated, Russian Ambassador Alexander Zasypkin said Wednesday.

“We have said this on several occasions particularly to Lebanon,” Zasypkin told As Safir daily in an interview.

Russia will not attend a Friends of Syria meeting in Paris on Friday which seeks to coordinate Western and Arab efforts to stop the violence in the country, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

"Russia was invited. They made it known that they did not want to participate, which is not a surprise," he told reporters.

Russia on Tuesday accused the West of seeking to "distort" the agreement reached last weekend in Geneva on a plan for a political transition to end the escalating conflict in Syria.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hailed the accord based on proposals by envoy Kofi Annan as an "important step" but said that Western capitals had already read more into the final statement than what was written on paper.

The "shift" in the positions of Russia and China on Syria should not be underestimated, the spokesman for peace envoy Kofi Annan said on Tuesday after international talks in Geneva.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday made a repeat trip to one of the four Pacific Kuril islands claimed by Japan, drawing new protests from Tokyo following years of unrelenting tensions.

Medvedev arrived on the island of Kunashir which lies just north of Japan's Hokkaido Island, pledging to improve the lives of the disputed chain's residents.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat said Monday that the Syrians will “crush the ruling gang” and claim victory over President Bashar al-Assad’s regime sooner or later, urging Russia and Iran to support the people not the government.

In his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine, Jumblat said that “Egypt witnessed a historical moment when elected President Mohammed Morsi took power to initiate a new era.”

Iran on Sunday said weekend talks held between major powers seeking a solution to the conflict in Syria were "unsuccessful" because it and Syria were excluded.

"This meeting was unsuccessful... because Syria was not present and some influential nations were not present," Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab-African Affairs Hossein Amir Abdolahian told state television.

Russian technicians were involved in the taking down of the Turkish fighter jet by the Syrian military last week, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday.

Quoting Middle Eastern diplomatic sources, the Times reported that the decision to down the Turkish jet was intended to signal a warning to NATO to stay out of the conflict raging in Syria for over a year.