Alwaght- Top Iranian diplomat Hussein Jaber Ansari has said that three sponsors of the Astana peace initiative on Syria have made a considerable progress in their discussion of Syria’s constitution committee in Moscow on Wednesday.
Ansari, an envoy of Tehran to the Astana talks, has made the remarks after he and the Turkish and Russian representatives met with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“I believe that two-thirds of the issues surrounding the committee, including its makeup and the mechanism, have been solved during the long and energy-taking negotiations. We must go the remaining way together,” he told Iran’s IRIB news reporter.
He continued that the central aim in the trio’s talks is to press forward with the Syrian peace talks, hosted by Kazakhstan’s capital Astana.
“In the civil society’s part of the constitution committee, we are trying to work out an appropriate formula to choose the representatives of the civil society in this committee. We are proposing our solutions to the case in the talks.
Jaber Ansari, who is Iran’s deputy foreign minister, dismissed the Western pressures on Iran for its presence in Syria, saying Iran’s role in Syria, both on the ground and in the peace efforts, is based on the understanding of the realities. “These realities are well understood also by Turkey and other actors in Syria,” he went on.
He criticized Washington’s “illogical” stances on Iran in Syria, saying that the major actors— Russia, Iran, and Turkey— will not give much credibility to the American postures.
On the other side, the Russian FM praised the efforts as providing the best platform to end the crisis, now in its eighth year, in Syria. He also told of a new meeting between the trio’s presidents expected in near future.
Russia, Iran, and Turkey launched the Astana peace initiative in 2017, allowing the government and opposition to discuss a solution to the conflict.
The efforts led to a set of agreements, including the “de-escalation zones” where fire between the warring sides was held.
The Western parties, led by the US, however, were pressing for the withdrawal of Iran from Syria. Tehran sent military advisors and provided other forms of help to Damascus on the behest of the Syrian government.
Washington, and a set of Western allies, intervened in Syria in 2014 while uninvited by the official administration in Syria.
Iran and Syria constantly accused the Western coalition of helping terrorists by providing cover to them in the north and east of the country. Tehran says ISIS remains are now protected by the American forces in Al-Tanf region close to the Iraqi border, where Washington set up a military base.
