ASTANA (TCA) — Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry on March 9 said that the next international meeting on Syria within the framework of the Astana Process will be held on March 14-15 in the capital of Kazakhstan.
The ministry said that high-ranking delegations from Russia, Turkey and Iran will attend, and invitations have been sent to representatives of the United Nations, the United States and Jordan. The guarantor states are expecting confirmation of participation of delegations of the government and the armed opposition of Syria.
Preliminary consultations are scheduled for March 14, and a plenary meeting is scheduled for March 15, the ministry said.
Within the framework of the Astana Process launched with the full support and direct participation of President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, there were two rounds of international meetings on Syria at a high level on January 23-24 and February 15-16, 2017, and a meeting of experts was held on February 6. The main outcome of these meetings was the agreement on rules for a joint operational group to monitor the ceasefire regime in Syria that paved way for the parties to discuss the political agenda in the framework of the Geneva Process in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 (2015).
The United Nations special envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, says he also has asked the warring parties to return to Geneva later in March as efforts to end Syria’s nearly 7-year-old conflict intensify, RFE/RL reported.
The UN special envoy did not announce a specific date for the next round of talks in Geneva.
De Mistura has been meeting in Geneva with government and opposition leaders in an effort to end the conflict that began in March 2011 when protests broke out in Syria against Assad’s government.
