Alexander Lavrentiev, the Russian President's Special Representative for the Syrian settlement, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin met with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on Sunday in Tehran and discussed the situation in Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Lavrentiev and Vershinin were part of a Russian interagency delegation with representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry. They met with the Deputy Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and also held consultations with Iran's Senior Assistant Foreign Minister for Special Political Affairs.
"During the talks there was a detailed exchange of views on the situation in the Middle East region with a focus on the tasks of stabilizing the situation "on the ground" in Syria while continuing the fight against terrorists, improving the humanitarian and socio-economic situation in the country. In addition, they discussed issues related to the implementation of UNSC resolution 2585 on humanitarian assistance to the Syrian Arab Republic and UNSC resolution 2254 on the settlement of the crisis in the Syrian Arab Republic," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
An armed conflict has been going on in Syria since 2011. Talks known as the "Astana format" (after the former name of the Kazakh capital) have been held in Nur-Sultan since 2017, and in January 2018 the Syrian National Dialogue Congress was held in Sochi, which was the first attempt since the beginning of the conflict to gather a wide range of participants on a single negotiating platform. The main result of the congress was the decision to create a constitutional committee, which works in Geneva and whose main task is to prepare a constitutional reform.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from RIA Novosti