[ad_1]
BEIRUT/ANKARA, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Syria is resisting Russian efforts to dealer a summit with Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan, three sources mentioned on Friday, after greater than a decade of bitter enmity because the outbreak of Syria’s civil battle.
Nevertheless two Turkish sources, together with a senior official, disputed that Damascus was delaying and mentioned that issues have been on observe for an eventual assembly between the leaders.
Erdogan’s authorities helps insurgent fighters who tried to topple President Bashar al-Assad and has accused the Syrian chief of state terrorism, saying earlier within the battle that peace efforts couldn’t proceed below his rule.
Assad says it’s Turkey which has backed terrorism by supporting an array of fighters together with Islamist factions and launching repeated navy incursions inside northern Syria. Ankara is readying one other doable operation, after blaming Syrian Kurdish fighters for a bombing in Istanbul.
Russia helped Assad flip the tide of the battle in his favour and says it’s in search of a political finish to the battle and needs to deliver the 2 leaders collectively for talks.
Erdogan has signalled readiness for rapprochement.
Talking every week after he shook fingers with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi final month, after repeatedly saying he couldn’t meet a frontrunner who got here to energy in a coup, he mentioned Turkey might “additionally get issues on observe with Syria.”
“There might be no resentment in politics,” he mentioned in a televised dialogue on the weekend.
Nevertheless, three sources with data of Syria’s place on doable talks mentioned Assad had rejected a proposal to fulfill Erdogan with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Two of the sources mentioned Damascus believed such a gathering might increase Erdogan forward of Turkish elections subsequent yr, particularly if it addressed Ankara’s objective of returning a number of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees from Turkey.
“Why hand Erdogan a victory without cost? No rapprochement will occur earlier than the elections,” one of many two mentioned, including that Syria had additionally turned down the thought of a international ministers’ assembly.
The third supply, a diplomat with data of the proposal, mentioned Syria “sees such a gathering as ineffective if it doesn’t include something concrete, and what they’ve requested for therefore far is the total withdrawal of Turkish troops.”
Turkish officers mentioned this week the military wanted just some days to be prepared for a floor incursion into northern Syria, the place it has already carried out artillery and air strikes.
However the authorities has additionally mentioned it’s prepared for talks with Damascus in the event that they give attention to safety on the border, the place Ankara needs Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters pushed from the frontier and refugees moved into ‘protected zones’.
An Assad-Erdogan assembly may very well be doable “within the not too distant future”, the senior Turkish official mentioned.
“Putin is slowly getting ready the trail for this,” the official mentioned. “It might be the start of a significant change in Syria and would have very constructive results on Turkey. Russia would profit too… given it’s stretched in lots of areas.”
Reporting by Maya Gebeily and Laila Bassam in Beirut and Orhan Coskun in Ankara; writing by Dominic Evans, Modifying by William Maclean and Rosalba O’Brien
Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Belief Ideas.
[ad_2]
Source link
