kremlin.ru
Today, on October 27, leaders of four countries are taking part in the summit held in Istanbul, TASS reports. The summit is attended by Russian, Turkish and French Presidents - Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Emmanuel Macron, as well as German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Syria became the central topic of the negotiations. They are discussing arrangement of conditions required to encourage refugees to return to the country. Furthermore, the heads of the states will exchange views on development of political settlement process in Syria. The leaders will also bring up the topic of measures to enhance security and stability.
This is the first summit on Syria within such framework. Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary for the President of Russia, earlier referred to it as to “synchronization of watches.” According to him, despite differences in approaches of the summit participants, all of them hope for commencement of political settlement.
In summer Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey, came forward with an initiative to hold such summit; the Russian party supported the proposal right away.
Prior to the joint negotiations, the President of Russia held bilateral meetings. He had a talk with Recep Erdoğan and with Angela Merkel. As to Macron, they had had a conversation on the phone before taking off to Turkey.
Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the RF, and Sergey Shoygu, Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, discussed issues of Syrian agenda with their Turkish colleagues in Istanbul.
Russkiy Mir
