Iran, Russia, Turkey third joint meeting on Syria talks held in Astana

After finalizing the first round of the general session of the International Meeting on Syrian Settlement which was held on Monday behind the closed doors and in the absence of reporters, Iran, Russia and Turkey held a joint meeting in Astana.

The negotiations focused on the final comments on articles of the Syrian talks' joint statement.

Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab-African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari, Deputy Undersecretary for the Middle East and Africa at the Foreign Ministry of Turkey Sedat Onal, Russia Foreign Minister’s Special Representative on the Middle East Settlement and Director of the Ministry’s Middle East and North Africa Department Sergey Vershinin participated in the event.

Iranian, Russian and Turkish delegations holding several bilateral and trilateral talks in Astana on Sunday and Monday consulted on more coordination aiming at increasing success chance in negotiations.

'Syrian talks are an important stage in solving Syria crisis politically and the armed opposition groups' attendance is regarded as a success,' Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.

'The armed groups will join political opponents and negotiations among Syrian sides would become more pervasive, more detailed and better,' he said.

'This act is fully compatible with UN Security Council's statement urging all opposition groups' participation in negotiations,' he said.

The two-day negotiations of Syrian government representatives and armed opposition groups was held with the attendance of Iran, Russia, Turkey, United Nations, Kazakhstan and US ambassador to Kazakhstan on Monday.

The meeting is scheduled to be wrapped up after reading Iran-Russia-Turkey trilateral statement on Tuesday.

Astana meeting has been planned to remove obstacles on the way of resuming Syrian peace talks in Geneva which has been stopped by sabotage of armed Syrian opposition groups.

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