Russia, Turkey & Iran ready to be guarantors in resolving Syrian crisis – Russian defense minister

A text of the Moscow declaration on immediate steps in resolving the Syrian crisis is being prepared. Moscow, Ankara and Tehran are ready to be guarantors of its implementation, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.

“Today experts are working on the text of the Moscow declaration on immediate steps toward resolving the Syrian crisis. This is a thorough, extremely necessary document,” Shoigu said at the meeting with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Dehghan.

According to Shoigu, all previous “attempts to agree on joint efforts undertaken by the US or their partners were doomed.”

“None of them exerted real influence on the situation on the ground,” he said.

The approval of the declaration at the level of defense and foreign ministers shows a willingness to “act as guarantors and jointly resolve the urgent issues of the Syrian crisis,” Shoigu said.

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“That’s why we support the adoption of this declaration,” he added.

Shoigu also met with the minister of National Defense of Turkey, Fikri Işık, who praised the operation on liberating eastern Aleppo.

“Now we are observing a very successful operation to liberate eastern Aleppo from fighters, the evacuation of the families of the opposition from Aleppo,” Işık said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who is currently in Moscow for talks with Russia’s Sergey Lavrov and Iran’s Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that the trilateral cooperation has proven its effectiveness in eastern Aleppo and called for it to spread to other parts of Syria.

“A political solution is the best solution, this is what we believe,” Çavuşoğlu said.

He added that the ceasefire should be implements in all parts of Syria, adding that the truce doesn’t concern Islamic State or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as Al-Nusra Front). 

Zarif said that Russia, Turkey and Iran should cooperate “to end terrorism which is holding hostage everyone in Syria and in the Middle East.”

“Terrorism can’t be an instrument even for short-term political goals because it is a threat and we need to battle it,” he said.