The western super powers could have ended Syrian crisis and saved millions of lives about three years ago if they had responded positively to a Russian offer of Assad’s stepping down, reveals a new report.

A senior Finnish negotiator, who at the time was involved in a back-channel peace discussions, claimed that the US, Britain and France ‘were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall’, and so they ignored a three-point Russian plan, including a proposal that Assad would ‘cede power at some point after peace talks’ between the regime and the opposition.

British daily The Guardian said this in a special report published on 15 September quoting Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari who claimed that ‘western powers failed to seize on the proposal.’

The report came at a time when the gravest refugee crisis has hit Europe hard since the World War II, a crisis that is believed to be caused by the failure of western super powers to strike a deal with Assad regime back in 2012.

Interviewed by The Guardian, Martti Ahtisaari said during his talks with the envoys from five UN Security Council permanent members in February 2012 in New York the Russian ambassador, VitalyChurkin, told him about the plan.

‘The most intriguing was the meeting I had with Vitaly Churkin because I know this guy,’ Ahtisaari was quoted as saying.

Ahtisaari said, ‘…he (Churkin) said: “Martti, sit down and I’ll tell you what we should do.

‘He said three things: One – we should not give arms to the opposition. Two – we should get a dialogue going between the opposition and Assad straight away. Three – we should find an elegant way for Assad to step aside.’

Ahtisaari also claimed that he believed that Churkin’s proposal was consulted by the Kremlin, and so he passed the message to American, British and French missions at the UN.

But, the response Ahtisaari got was not what he expected. He added, ‘Nothing happened because I think all….were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything.’

However, two other European diplomats told The Guardian that they doubted that Churkin’s proposal was directly from Kremlin.

‘The weakest point is Ahtisaari’s claim that Churkin was speaking with Moscow’s authority…. And even then I’d have wanted to be sure it wasn’t a Putin trick to draw us in to a process that ultimately preserved Assad’s state under a different leader but with the same outcome,’ said Sir John Jenkins, a former UK’s Foreign Office Middle East department director.

UN officials did not comment on the revelation of Ahtisaari, who, however, was ‘adamant’ about his claim that it was under the capability of the western powers to end Syrian conflict years earlier.

In 2012 the death toll from the Syrian conflict was estimated to be about 7,500 which passed 220,000 at the beginning of this year. Again Syria crisis has given rise of Islamic State forcing millions out of their homes.