West 'ignored Russian offer in 2012 to have Syria's Assad step aside'

``Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world's gravest refugee crisis since the second world war... the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal.''