{"id":15500,"date":"2018-09-18T11:26:45","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T11:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15500"},"modified":"2018-09-18T11:26:45","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T11:26:45","slug":"iran-hails-russia-turkey-agreement-on-idlib-buffer-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15500","title":{"rendered":"Iran hails Russia-Turkey agreement on Idlib buffer zone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Iran’s foreign minister has hailed an agreement between Turkey and Russia to avert an assault on the Syrian rebel-held Idlib province, as an example of “responsible diplomacy”.<\/p>\n

An\u00a0agreement<\/a>\u00a0to halt plans for an offensive on the last major rebel-held stronghold was announced\u00a0in the Black Sea resort of Sochi\u00a0on Monday after a meeting between the\u00a0Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin<\/a>\u00a0and his Turkish counterpart\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdogan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On his Twitter account, Zarif wrote: “Intensive responsible diplomacy over the last few weeks-pursued in my visits to Ankara & Damascus, followed by the Iran-Russia-Turkey Summit in Tehran and the meeting (in) Sochi-is succeeding to avert war in #Idlib with a firm commitment to fight extremist terror. Diplomacy works.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the agreement, troops from Russia<\/a> and Turkey will enforce a new demilitarised zone in Idlib from which “radical” rebels will be required to withdraw by the middle of next month.<\/p>\n

Iran has fought as an ally of President Bashar al-Assad<\/a> in the Syrian conflict alongside Russian forces, while Turkey supported certain rebel groups during the seven-year-old civil war.<\/p>\n

‘Withdrawal in October’<\/h2>\n

Speaking alongside Erdogan, Putin said the 15-20km-wide zone would be established by October 15.<\/p>\n

This would entail a “withdrawal of all radical fighters” from Idlib, including the once al-Qaeda affiliated Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).<\/p>\n

Putin said that heavy weapons would be withdrawn from all opposition forces by October 10 – a move supported by the Syrian government.<\/p>\n

Describing the agreement as a “serious result”, Putin said that “Russia and Turkey have confirmed their determination to counter terrorism in Syria in all its forms”.<\/p>\n

For his part, Erdogan said both his country and Russia would carry out coordinated patrols in the demilitarised zone.<\/p>\n

“We decided on the establishment of a region that is cleaned of weapons between the areas which are under the control of the opposition and the regime,” said Erdogan.<\/p>\n

“In return, we will ensure that radical groups, which we will\u00a0designate together with Russia, won’t be active in the relevant\u00a0area,” he added.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Syrian government had recently announced plans to launch a major military offensive on Idlib province, long controlled by various armed opposition groups, after managing to claw back swaths of rebel-held territory.<\/p>\n

Since the beginning of September, dozens of people have been killed and wounded in air raids and attacks by the Syrian government and allied Russian fighter jets, according to\u00a0<\/span>activists on the ground<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the past week, Turkey has deployed reinforcements and expanded defensive structures at a dozen observation points across opposition-held territories in Idlib, western Aleppo, and northern Hama provinces.<\/p>\n

The outposts were established after a “de-escalation”\u00a0agreement was reached between Turkey, Russia, and Iran in July 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran’s foreign minister has hailed an agreement between Turkey and Russia to avert an assault on the Syrian rebel-held Idlib province, as an example of “responsible diplomacy”. An\u00a0agreement\u00a0to halt plans for an offensive on the last major rebel-held stronghold was announced\u00a0in the Black Sea resort of Sochi\u00a0on Monday after a meeting between the\u00a0Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}