Iran’s top military commander arrives in Russia for talks

Rasa - Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri has arrived in the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi to attend a tripartite meeting with his Turkish and Russian counterparts.

News ID: 434898

Date: 20 November 2017 - 23:03

RNA - 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 Daesh terrorist group.

The meeting will be held on the same day that Iranian, Russian and Turkish Presidents Hassan Rouhani, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan plan to hold talks in Sochi about the Syrian crisis and ways to resolve it.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Turkish and Russian counterparts Mevlut Cavusoglu and Sergei Lavrov, respectively, held preparatory talks in the southern Turkish city of Antalya on Sunday ahead of the Sochi summit.

Speaking after the meeting, the Iranian foreign minister criticized some countries such as Saudi Arabia for pursuing policies aimed at sowing discord among regional states.

“If they change their methods, they can also be involved in [promoting] regional peace instead of warmongering [policies],” Zarif said.

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.

Syrian army soldiers, backed by pro-government fighters from popular defense groups, on Sunday fully liberated the strategic city of al-Bukamal in the country’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr and on the border with Iraq from the clutches of Daesh Takfiri terrorist group. The city was the extremist group's last stronghold in the Arab country.

847/940