{"id":23729,"date":"2018-11-29T21:23:04","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T21:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23729"},"modified":"2018-11-29T21:23:04","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T21:23:04","slug":"turkey-lambasts-unacceptable-uk-court-extradition-rejection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23729","title":{"rendered":"Turkey lambasts \u2018unacceptable\u2019 UK court extradition rejection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nASTANA: Russia, Turkey and Iran failed to make any tangible progress in setting up a Syrian constitutional committee at a meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana, the office of UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said in a statement on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\nThe UN envoy on Syria said there had been \u201cno tangible progress in overcoming the 10-month stalemate on the composition of the constitutional committee,\u201d following talks sponsored by opposition-backer Turkey and Syrian regime supporters Russia and Iran in Astana.<\/p>\n

\nThe constitutional committee is viewed as a vital element in reaching a political settlement in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThis was the last occasion of an Astana meeting in 2018 and has, sadly for the Syrian people, been a missed opportunity to accelerate the establishment of a credible, balanced and inclusive, Syrian-owned, Syrian-led, UN-facilitated constitutional committee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nDe Mistura, who announced his resignation last month, capped his term as peace envoy with two days of talks in Astana.<\/p>\n

\nThe meeting in Astana was \u201ca missed opportunity to accelerate the establishment of a credible, balanced and inclusive, Syrian-owned, Syrian-led, UN-facilitated constitutional committee,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

\nThe two-day negotiations, concluding on Thursday, are the 11th in Astana since Moscow began a diplomatic push in early 2017 that effectively sidelined other talks on Syria led by the UN.<\/p>\n

\nSyria\u2019s grinding civil war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions.<\/p>\n

\nThe three countries said in a joint statement issued after the talks that they would \u201cintensify\u201d consultations to establish the committee as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe Russian side views the outcome of the conference as positive,\u201d Russia\u2019s Syria envoy Alexander Lavrentiev told a briefing in Astana after the talks.<\/p>\n

\nMoscow, Tehran and Ankara also said in the joint statement they were concerned with cease-fire violations in the Idlib demilitarized zone in northwest Syria and \u201cwould step up their efforts to ensure observance,\u201d but stressed the need to continue to \u201cfight against terrorism\u201d there.<\/p>\n

\nThis would include enhancing the work of the Iranian-Russian-Turkish coordination center, the statement said.<\/p>\n

\nRegime-ally Russia and Turkey, which backs Syrian fighters, in September agreed to create a de-militarization buffer zone around the opposition-held Idlib enclave.<\/p>\n

\nBut shelling exchanges have been common since then and the first airstrikes since the deal hit the area on Sunday, after Russia and Damascus accused Idlib-based fighters of using chemical weapons to attack the regime-held city of Aleppo on Saturday, a charge they deny.<\/p>\n

\nThe Astana talks have seen the US and other Western countries keeping at arm\u2019s length over Syria.<\/p>\n

\nA joint communique agreed by the three sponsors targeted Washington\u2019s continued military presence in the country.<\/p>\n

\nThe guarantors \u201crejected all attempts to create new realities on the ground under the pretext of combating terrorism,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

\nEarlier this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the US of using the presence of Daesh in southern Syria as an excuse to keep forces stationed there. Lavrentiev also complained of the extended US presence during the talks in Astana.<\/p>\n

\nThe next set of Syria negotiations in Astana are scheduled for early February, according to the joint communique.<\/p>\n

\nSyria\u2019s grinding seven-year civil war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASTANA: Russia, Turkey and Iran failed to make any tangible progress in setting up a Syrian constitutional committee at a meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana, the office of UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said in a statement on Thursday. The UN envoy on Syria said there had been \u201cno tangible progress in overcoming the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23729","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\/23729","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=23729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}