FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Efforts To End Syria War, Bring Migrants Home
Aug. 16, 2018 (EIRNS)—Efforts are afoot to bring an end to the Syrian war and get millions of Syrian refugees back home. UPI reported today that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has worked out a deal with Jordan which will enable thousands of migrants living in camps there to return. Meanwhile, the Russian Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov has sent a letter to U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford, expressing Moscow’s readiness to cooperate with Washington in helping refugees come home, UPI reported.
On Aug. 15, TASS reported that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Adviser to the Lebanese Prime Minister George Shaabna met in Moscow to discuss conditions necessary for the return of Syrian refugees to their homes.
“They discussed the situation in Syria with an accent on the issue of ensuring necessary conditions for an early return to their homeland of Syrian refugees staying on the territory of the Lebanese Republic,”
the ministry said, according to TASS.
Also, representatives from Syria’s Kurdish northeastern region met with government officials in Damascus recently, reported Syria’s Al-Watan newspaper. The Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Council went for new talks on decentralization and local administration, Al-Watan reported. “All the discussions happening now are ... to find out the other side’s point of view,” said SDC co-chair Riad Darar.
In Moscow, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that a third meeting of the three presidents of the Astana process guarantor states for Syria’s ceasefire—Russia, Iran and Turkey—was being planned for September.
“The possibility of holding another trilateral meeting in early September is being explored, after the three Presidents’ schedules are agreed on through diplomatic channels,”
TASS quoted him saying. Russian Presidential Envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentiev told TASS late last month that the Astana format summit would take place in Tehran.
