Putin in talks with Turkey and Iran over Syria
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin was scheduled to host his Turkish and Iranian counterparts yesterday for talks focused on the peace effort in Syria.
A day before the milestone meeting, to be the first trilateral talks in person between Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani, Iran announced that the extremist group Islamic State (IS) had been practically defeated in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
Russia and Iran, major military backers of Syria’s controversial ruling regime, and Turkey, which has opposed that regime, have come together to support a broad ceasefire in Syria, which has been devastated by years of a multi-sided civil war. The ceasefire does not include certain extremist groups, such as IS. The trilateral meeting in the southern Russian city of Sochi was expected to centre on prospects for a “peaceful and lasting political settlement in Syria after the routing of the terrorists”, Putin told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday, according to a Kremlin transcript.
Putin was photographed embracing the Syrian leader in Sochi as they met to lay groundwork for the trilateral summit.
“We will accept and talk with anyone who is really interested in a political settlement,” Al-Assad assured Putin. Russia has been “working closely together with other countries, such as Iraq, the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan,” Putin told Al-Assad.
“We maintain constant contact with these partners.”
Putin also spoke with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu by phone on Tuesday night at the Israeli side’s request before the trilateral meeting the next day, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Israel, a staunch regional rival of Iran, has repeatedly expressed concern over the presence of Iranian and Iranbacked forces in Syria.
An official in Netanyahu’s office said the conversation “lasted about half an hour and dealt with Syria and Iran’s attempts to establish itself in Syria”.
The conversation dealt with “the prospects of developments in the Middle East, primarily in the context of the concluding stage of the fight against international terrorism in Syria”, the Kremlin said.
“Practical issues related to the situation in the southern de-escalation zone in Syria were discussed,” the statement said. Syrian opposition groups met in Riyadh yesterday with the aim of forming a united front before the eighth round of UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva.
“The Syrian crisis is at a delicate stage and there will be no solution without consensus,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the opening session.
The Saudi-backed opposition High Negotiations Committee has held discussions since Monday with delegations from two other moderate camps in a bid to reach consensus for a “joint negotiating strategy” for the upcoming Geneva peace talks on November 28.