ANKARA: The four-side meeting between Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Russia, Syria and Iran on the Syrian issue may take place in early May i...
ANKARA: The four-side meeting between Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Russia, Syria and Iran on the Syrian issue may take place in early May in Moscow, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on TV Monday.
"The organization of the meeting at the level of foreign ministers was discussed by deputy foreign ministers earlier. Last week, we discussed it with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Currently, such meeting is planned for early May, and it will take place in Moscow," he said.
The foreign ministers will discuss preparation of the talks between the four heads of state.
"The four-side meetings aim to normalize and revive the mechanisms for Syrian settlement - the Astana process in particular. Steps were made within this process earlier, but no results have been achieved. In addition, the roadmap that the parties work on implies a meeting of the leaders in the end. Perspective and preparation for such talks will be discussed in Moscow in May," he said.
At the same time, Cavusoglu noted that direct negotiations between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar Assad are not being considered at this point, and called to wait for results of the four-side format on Syria.
Cavusoglu also noted that, aside from the goals of the Astana process, Turkey finds it important to ramp up combating terrorism in Syria’s border regions. He noted that the military operations, carried out by Ankara earlier, "made it possible to prevent the establishment of a terrorist corridor in Syria."
"However, terrorist groups [Kurdish organizations, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, deemed terrorist by Ankara - TASS] continue to operate in northeast Syria. They threaten us and they want to divide Syria. So we want to ramp up joint combat with these threats," Cavusoglu said.
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