Meeting on Syrian peace

– The presidents of Iran, Russia, and Turkey will meet on September 7 in Iran for their third tripartite summit on seeking to end the conflict in Syria, Turkish state television said yesterday.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will travel to Iran to meet with his Russian and Iranian counterparts Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani, state-run TRT Haber television said. Private NTV television added the summit would be held in the Iranian city of Tabriz. A Turkish presidential official could not immediately confirm this. However, the presidency has invited Turkish journalists to cover a trip by Erdogan to Iran on September 7.

Ankara, Moscow and Tehran are backing peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana which they insist are aimed at reinforcing, rather than undermining a UN peace process. Iran and Russia are the main allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and their military interventions in Syria are seen as tipping the balance of the war in the regime’s favour.

Turkey has backed rebels seeking to oust Assad, but since 2016 has been working with Iran and Russia to bring peace to Syria. A big item on the agenda is the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib which Assad aims to retake. –

Ankara