Russia-Iran-Syria-Turkey ministerial meeting being worked out

"Iran has also expressed its desire to join the negotiation process ... The modalities of holding a quadrilateral meeting at the level of foreign ministers, involving Iran, are being worked out now. We all have a common goal to resolve the situation around Syria and stabilize the environment in the Middle East region,"  Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told Sputnik on Thursday.

The deputy foreign minister added that the current contacts of security forces and diplomats were supposed to lay down conditions for Syria-Turkey negotiations, which might pave the way for potential agreements.

The war in Syria has been going on since 2011, with President Bashar Assad's forces fighting various armed insurgent groups. Since 2016, the Turkish armed forces have been also conducting air and ground operations in Syria against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Damascus has repeatedly called the presence of Turkish forces on the Syrian border illegal and urged Ankara to withdraw its troops.

In 2017, Russia, Turkey, and Iran launched a mediation group on the Syrian settlement in Astana. In January 2018, the Russian city of Sochi hosted a congress of the Syrian national dialogue, the first such attempt since the start of the conflict to gather an inclusive pool of Syrian political forces. The main result of the Congress was the decision to create a Constitutional Committee, which operates in Geneva and whose main task is to prepare a constitutional reform in Syria.

In December 2022, the defense ministers of Russia, Syria, and Turkey held trilateral talks in Moscow to discuss ways to resolve the Syrian crisis. The negotiations marked the first official meeting between the Turkish and Syrian defense chiefs in 11 years. In the same month, Ankara suggested that the Turkish, Syrian and Russian foreign ministers held a meeting in February 2023, possibly in a third country.

MNA/PR