Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari, Russian President Special Envoy on Syria Alexander Lavrentiev, and Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal began their consultations on Wednesday in the run-up to the sixth round of Astana talks on Syria, scheduled to begin in Astana on Thursday.
“This Astana meeting is widely expected to be a huge success, to finalize the whole Astana process since January,” a source close to the Astana talks told Russia’s Sputnik news agency.
“A lot of work has been done at the expert level and the highest political level, to reach a final agreement on the whole package of documents, on all de-escalation zones,” the source added.
The previous five rounds of the negotiations took place on January 23-24, February 15-16, March 14-15, May 3-4 and July 4-5.
The sixth round of the talks will focus on the details of the fourth de-escalation zone, in Syria’s western Idlib Province, where significant concentrations of Takfiri terrorists, most notably from al-Nusra Front, are operating.