Lavrov: Russia, Iran, Hezbollah supporting Syria against terrorism

EghtesadOnline: Moscow, Tehran, and Hezbollah are supporting Syria in fighting against terrorism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

News ID: ۷۴۱۱۱۴

23 April 2017

He made the remarks speaking to reporters in Moscow, according to IRNA.

“The situation on the ground is very complicated, because there are very many armed players, primarily the Syrian Army and Russia’s Aerospace Forces that support it, Iranian units and Hezbollah, which are contributing to the fight against terrorism at the request of the Syrian government," Lavrov said.

“There are also special operations forces from some Western countries there, as well as Turkish armed forces and the US-led coalition forces. If all these forces could be convinced to turn against terrorism – ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, a positive result would be achieved very quickly.”

“However, we have not yet succeeded in this. Conflicts between the armed opposition have not abated and the Kurdish forces, with whom Russia and the United States are cooperating, which the Turkish authorities consider to be wrong, are a matter of contention.”

“There are very many external factors here. It is very important to see that we are using the Astana process to strengthen the ceasefire regime and determine the criteria which all forces willing to dissociate themselves from the terrorists must comply to.”

“We also use the Astana platform to create joint mechanisms with Turkey and Iran which will be used not just to register ceasefire violations but also to respond to these violations by calling their perpetrators to account.”

As the three guarantors of the ceasefire agreement, Iran, Russia and Turkey have held four rounds of Astana talks since January 23 on maintaining truce in Syria.

While the measures taken by some Western-Arab oppositions led by US aiming at overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government in six months were defeated but information, financial and weaponry supports of scores of terrorist groups still exist.

The mentioned acts resulted in claiming the lives of tens of thousands of civilians especially women and children and left millions homeless.