Iran, Russia, Turkey to hold Syria summit next week
Updated 10:02, 31-Aug-2018
CGTN
["china"]
The presidents of Iran, Russia, and Turkey will meet on September 7 in Iran for their third tripartite summit on seeking to end the conflict in Syria, Turkish state television said Monday.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will travel to Iran to meet with his Russian and Iranian counterparts Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani, TRT Haber television said. Another Turkish television channel NTV added the summit would be held in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz.
Erdogan had previously indicated that he planned to host a summit on September 7 in Istanbul on Syria with Putin and also French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad greets his supporters at a mosque in Damascus, August 21, 2018. /VCG Photo

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad greets his supporters at a mosque in Damascus, August 21, 2018. /VCG Photo

But reports over the last weeks have suggested that such a meeting was increasingly unlikely and was set to be replaced by the latest three-way summit between Iran, Russia, and Turkey.
The three leaders have previously held summits in the Russian resort city of Sochi and the Turkish capital Ankara.
Ankara, Moscow, and Tehran are backing peace talks based in the Kazakh capital Astana which they insist are aimed at reinforcing, rather than undermining, a UN peace process in Geneva.
Iran and Russia are the main allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and their military interventions in Syria are widely seen as tipping the balance of the seven-year civil war in the government's favor.
Turkey has backed rebels seeking to oust Assad but since late 2016 has been working increasingly closely with Iran and Russia to bring peace to Syria.
A major item on the agenda at the summit is expected to be the rebel-held northwestern Syrian province of Idlib which Assad wants to re-capture, to crown a string of military successes.
But Turkey has said a military operation to take Idlib risks provoking a humanitarian "catastrophe", warning that 3.5 million people are crammed into the region.
(Cover: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a joint news conference after their meeting in Ankara, April 4, 2018. /VCG Photo)
Source(s): AFP