Putin says working with Turkey on new Syria peace talks

By Ali Cura

KIEV, Ukraine (AA) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have reached an agreement to work on launching a new series of peace talks between the Syrian regime and opposition.

Putin told a press conference in Tokyo, where he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that the next step for “normalization” in the war-torn country was to reach an agreement on a nationwide ceasefire.

"The day before yesterday in a phone conversation we agreed with President Erdogan that we will offer the conflicting parties -- we to the government of Syria and the Turkish president to the representatives of the armed opposition -- to continue peace talks at a new venue, and this could be Kazakhstan’s capital Astana," he was quoted as saying by Russian news agency TASS.

Putin added that if the regime and opposition agree to the proposal, "we will ask Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to back this process."

He insisted that the proposed talks in Astana would not “compete” with those held in Geneva, but would “complement the Geneva talks".

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu acknowledged in Ankara that such a meeting was discussed in a phone conversation between Erdogan and Putin, but said it would not be a summit between the leaders as reported in some media.

“During the phone conversation between our president and Putin, Putin made the following proposal: once a ceasefire is secured, it would be beneficial if opposition groups and regime representatives met in a third country.”

Earlier this week, Syrian opposition forces in eastern Aleppo reached a ceasefire deal with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to evacuate civilians from the city.

Since then, at least 7,500 civilians have left Aleppo for safe areas in Idlib -- which is located near the border with Turkey -- according to Syrian opposition group officials.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN. The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, put the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000 people.