Moscow confirmed on Wednesday willingness to hold “comprehensive talks” with Washington over the situation in Syria.
During a videoconference of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said his country is interested in working with the United States to improve agreements aimed at preventing dangerous military incidents, on the basis of experience gained in Syria.
“We reconfirm our interest to improve bilateral agreement with the US to avoid dangerous military activities and an arrangement on avoidance of dangerous military incidents. To prop on this Syrian experience would be right in this case as well," the Russian official said.
He said Moscow has more contentious and difficult issues “rather than interfaces for our common work with the US on Syria.”
"We will do our utmost to ensure that the US understands properly what we are doing, why we are doing these things or that things there, and we will expand the interfaces of our dialogue with the US if the US reciprocates, if the US wants so. We are ready, on our part,” Ryabkov explained.
On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin discussed during a telephone conversation the latest developments in Syria’s Idlib province and the situation in Libya.
They emphasized the importance of bolstering efforts towards compliance with bilateral agreements on a ceasefire in Idlib, the Kremlin press service said.
“An emphasis was put on a need to boost efforts towards the implementation of the Russian-Turkish agreements on the Idlib de-escalation zone, including the Additional Protocol to the Sochi Memorandum of September 17, 2018," it said.
Separately, a pro-Syrian regime demonstration was organized in Suwaida province in rejection and condemnation of US sanctions and the unilateral coercive measures imposed on Syria, Syrian regime media reported.
The demonstration coincided with a protest staged by anti-regime activists who demanded the release of Raed al-Khatib, an activist who was arrested by Syrian regime forces on June 9 during a raid on an office in Engy tower in Suwaida city for taking part in an anti-regime protest.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday it fears that Khatib will be subjected to torture and ultimately classified as forcibly “disappeared” like approximately 85 percent of those detained by the regime.
It noted that about 130,000 Syrian citizens are still held in the Syrian regime’s detention centers, constituting a grave threat to their wellbeing given the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
