* Russia says Syria stance has nothing to do with election
* Says Russia out to block unjustified interference
* Putin won a six-year presidential term on Sunday (Adds more quotes, context)
By Steve Gutterman
MOSCOW, March 6 (Reuters) - Russia warned the West on Tuesday not to expect a shift in its stance on Syria following Vladimir Putin's victory in a presidential election.
One month before Sunday's election, Russia vetoed a Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over a crackdown on protesters and supported an Arab League call for his exit.
Putin made accusations of global meddling by the United States and its allies a theme of his election campaign. This prompted suggestions his tough talk was aimed at a domestic audience and that Moscow might be more flexible after the vote.
"Russia's position on a Syrian settlement was never subject to political considerations and is not formed under the influence of electoral cycles, unlike those of some of our Western colleagues," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"Our approaches to a resolution of internal conflicts are based on international law and the United Nations Charter," it said. "We are talking primarily about strict adherence to the principle of inadmissibility of interference from outside."
The ministry said the conflict in Syria could be resolved "only on the basis of a broad national dialogue in which Syrians themselves - and nobody else - will take decisions about the future development of their state".
"We believe that attempts by external 'players' to force models of settlement, supporting only one side in a conflict, to be unacceptable," the statement said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia had vetoed the Western-Arab Security Council resolution on Syria last month because it failed to subject armed opponents of the government to the same demands as government troops.
Ryabkov, speaking to journalists, said there were "no campaign undertones" in the positions Russia has taken on Syria and other issues in recent months.
Russia has welcomed further efforts to find consensus in the Security Council on ways to help end the bloodshed in Syria, where the United Nations says government forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians in a year of bloodshed.
However, another Russian diplomat said on Monday that a new U.S.-drafted blueprint for a resolution was only slightly different from the one Russia vetoed and needed more balance.
Putin, in power since 2000 and now prime minister, won a six-year presidential term with nearly 64 percent of the vote in an election denounced by opponents and deemed unfair by international observers.
In an article on foreign policy last month, he wrote of "regular U.S. attempts to conduct 'political engineering' ... in regions that are traditionally important to us, and in election campaigns in Russia".
Putin made clear Russia would use its U.N. Security Council veto to block U.S. action when it sees fit and warned nations and alliances such as NATO not to intervene in sovereign states when they lack Security Council support. (Writing by Steve Gutterman, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Robert Woodward)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
