Trilateral meeting on Syria begins in Astana

A meeting of the joint task force of Russia, Turkey and Iran on Syrian ceasefire regime monitoring started in Astana, with experts from the United Nations and Jordan participating in the talks, an informed source told Sputnik on Monday.

During the Astana talks that took place on January 23-24 and brought together the representatives of the Syrian government and the armed opposition groups for the first time since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011, the three guarantor countries (Russia, Iran and Turkey) have reached an agreement to create a trilateral commission to monitor breaches of the established ceasefire to minimize truce violations. On Monday, the task force will discuss the details of the mechanism and its implementation.

According to the source, the parties plan to discuss the maintenance of the ceasefire regime and work out ways to control and suppress its violations, as well as to talk about cooperation on humanitarian issues and increasing the trust levels between the Syrian government and the opposition.

Earlier, Staffan de Mistura, a UN envoy for Syria, postponed the next round of the Geneva talks to "give a chance to this Astana initiative to actually implement itself." The negotiations in Switzerland were expected to take place in early February. They are now said to be slated for February 20.

On Sunday, Russian presidential envoy on Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said the Astana talks could become a template for solving the regional crisis

Source: MENA