WASHINGTON, November 19, 6:12 /ITAR-TASS/. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to discuss the situation in Syria and other parts of the Middle East, the state of affairs in the Caucasus, the problems of bilateral relations, and new Turkish-Russian cooperation projects at the talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the two leaders are expected to hold in St Petersburg in a few days’ time, Foreign Minister Ahmet Dabutoglu said Monday.
He will escort Erdogan on the trip to St Petersburg as a member of the Turkish delegation.
Davutoglu, who addressed a news conference in Washington together with the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, said that a news session of the high-level bilateral cooperation council would be held in St Petersburg.
He said the talks in Washington had offered him a good chance to hold consultations with John Kerry regarding the visits to Russia, as well as Iran where he would go shortly.
Erdogan is going to Russia to co-chair the session of the bilateral council together with President Putin, Davutoglu said. Although the parties to the negotiations will naturally focus on bilateral issues and new projects, the discussions will also embrace a range of pressing international issues like Syria and the Caucasus.
Davutoglu expressed the confidence that the forthcoming top-level and high-level Russian-Turkish meetings would make an encouraging contribution to the untangling of pressing problems in the Caucasus and the Middle East.
He also mentioned next week’s visit to Teheran, saying that he now had a perfect opportunity to hold consultations with Russia and Iran on knotty international problems right after the fruitful talks in Washington.
Davutoglu recalled that his trip to Teheran would be the first one after election of Hassan Rouhani to the post of President of the Islamic Republic.
Reciprocal visits of President Rouhani to Turkey and Prime Minister Erdogan to Iran are being prepared, he said.
Quite naturally, Turkish and Iranian officials will take up the problems related to the talks between Iran and the six negotiating countries /five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany/ and to the situation in hotbeds of tensions from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon, Davutoglu said.