Tabnak – As the Syrian government forces have managed to retake the last strongholds of ISIS terrorist group in the country, the political activism to find a political solution for post-war Syria has been heated up. In this regard, Iran, Turkey and Russia are trying to coordinate their diplomatic efforts at different levels.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is scheduled to travel to Russia on Wednesday to attend tripartite talks to be attended by the presidents of Iran, Russia and Turkey over Syria developments, according to a senior official with Iran's presidential office.
The visit to Russia will be made upon an invitation by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Parviz Esmaeili, the head of the Department for Communications and Information Dissemination of the Presidential office wrote on his Twitter account. The tripartite meeting is due to be held in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The high-level meeting comes at a time that the three parties has recently become even more active in their Syria cooperation. In this vein, foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey had a meeting Antalya on Sunday about the same issue, in which, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, they agreed on all key issues at Syria peace talks.
"We have gathered to discuss certain issues related to preparations for the summit of the three countries’ president, which is due in Sochi on November 22," Lavrov told reporters after a trilateral meeting of Iran, Russia and Turkey on the Syrian crisis, the Tass news agency reported.
"The work was very useful, we have reached agreement on all the key issues,” he added. "We shall report to our presidents our views on how to move forward, how to improve the process, which we call the Astana process and which should offer most favorable conditions to have the Geneva process at last gain some effective instruments to settle the tasks, outlined in the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2254," the Russian minister said.
At the same time, it is reported that the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri will set off for the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi to attend a tripartite meeting with his Turkish and Russian counterparts.
The sides are scheduled to exchange views about ways to enhance trilateral defense cooperation on Wednesday. The military brass of Iran, Turkey and Russia will also discuss the latest developments in Syria and trilateral cooperation on the fight against ISIS terrorist group.
It should be noted that Iran, Russia and Turkey are acting as the guarantors of a ceasefire in Syria that came during the intra-Syrian talks brokered by the three countries in the Kazakh capital, Astana.
So far, seven rounds of the Astana talks have brought representatives from Syria’s warring sides to the negotiating table in a bid to end the foreign-backed militancy in the Arab country, which broke out in March 2011.
