Turkish foreign minister to attend new round of Vienna talks

ANKARA

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The latest round of the Vienna talks for negotiations on the conflict in Syria will be held in Vienna on Nov. 14, with Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu attending the meeting from Turkey.

While Sinirlioğlu will be representing Turkey at the third round of negotiations for a political solution in Syria, United States Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Vienna, the U.S. State Department said.

“Secretary Kerry will hold bilateral and multilateral meetings with foreign counterparts to discuss the ongoing crisis in Syria,” spokesman John Kirby said.

The talks will be a continuation of a dialogue between 17 nations, along with U.N. and EU representatives, to agree on a plan to end the Syrian civil war.

Neither representatives of the Syria opposition nor Bashar al-Assad’s regime are expected to attend at this stage of the dialogue, officials said.

But, as with the last round of talks on October 30, the U.S. envoy is expected to be joined by his counterparts from Assad’s allies Russia and Iran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Nov. 9 that countries will hold “enlarged” talks on the Syrian conflict soon, accusing some of trying to evade negotiations.

“There will be another meeting in the nearest future in an enlarged format... that is about 20 countries and organisations,” he said speaking in the capital of Armenia at a press-conference.

Lavrov added that making progress ahead of the next meeting on the Syrian conflict is difficult due to some countries’ attempts to “evade” doing the work required and the talks themselves.

“A whole range of our partners are still trying to evade concrete work, the talks, and to limit the issue to abstract calls on the necessity of President Assad’s departure,” Lavrov said, calling it an approach that distracts from work that brings results.

Lavrov said that Moscow has already shared with its partners on Syria “our list of terrorist organisations” and expects that a new round of talks will come up with a “unified list, so that there are no issues about who is striking whom and who is supporting whom.”

The Turkish Presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın had said on Nov. 9 that the third gathering of the Vienna process would be held on Nov. 13 or 14, just before the G-20 summit in Turkey’s resort town of Antalya on Nov. 15 and Nov. 16, and therefore Syria will be on the agenda of the G-20 Summit discussions.