Foreign Minister Zarif to leave for Geneva

The foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi has said a consultative meeting of Iranian, Russian and Turkish foreign ministers, together with UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Syria will take place in Geneva on Tuesday.

Zarif will leave Tehran for Geneva to take part in the meeting, according to an Iran Press report.

Also on 28 November, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, a senior advisor to the Iranian foreign minister on political affairs met with Syrian and Russian representatives to Astana peace talks.

Nine meetings were held in Astana, Kazakhstan while the 10th meeting was held in Sochi, Russia this July.

Three guarantor countries of the Astana process (Iran, Russia, Turkey) in their final statement stressed on their commitments to preserve Syrian sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity and need to continue fighting all terror groups in the country.

The guarantor states decided to hold the next high-level meeting on Syria in February 2019 in Astana.

Earlier on 13 November, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani in his meeting with a visiting Syrian parliamentary delegation said the enemies of Syria are resorting to political pressure following their military failure in the Arab country.

More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions have been driven from their homes since the conflict began in March 2011, and the infrastructure of the country has been destroyed.

About 1.2 million Syrian refugees have returned to their homes since September 2015. 

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