Delegates confirm attendance at Syrian talks in Kazakhstan
Nur-Sultan, June 14 (EFE).- Representatives of the Syrian government and opposition confirmed on Tuesday their attendance at a new round of peace talks slated to begin the following day in the Kazakh capital, officials in Kazakhstan announced.
“All parties to the Astana Process on Syria confirmed their participation in the talks that will take place in the Kazakh capital June 15-16,” the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said delegations from the guarantor states of the ceasefire in the Arab country: Russia, Turkey and Iran, as well as members of the Syrian Government and the armed opposition, will be present at the meeting.
This is the eighteenth Astana Process gathering, which will also be attended by observers from the United Nations, the Red Cross and a delegation from Jordan.
The new round will be held at a time when Turkey is preparing for a new large-scale intervention in northern Syria, where fighting between the Turkish Army and the Kurdish militias of the YPG (People’s Defense Units) has intensified.
Although Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has indicated that the general goal is to control a strip along the entire Turkish-Syrian border to avoid attacks, he later specified that the objective of the next intervention would be two areas to the north and northeast of Aleppo, Manbech and Tel Rifaat.
The government of Syrian President Bachar al-Assad warned that Turkey’s plans are a threat to peace and undermine all previous agreements that had allowed the implementation of de-escalation and security zones in northeastern Syria through agreements in 2018 and 2019 between Russia and Turkey in Sochi.
The meeting in Nur-Sultan takes place some six months after the last round in the Kazakh capital, where Russia, Turkey and Iran pledged to continue efforts to revive the Syrian peace process, and reiterated the importance of the work of the Syrian Constitutional Committee. EFE
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