ASTANA, February 7. /TASS/. The next meeting of the Joint Operational Group for monitoring the Syrian ceasefire, scheduled to be held in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana on February 15-16, may create conditions for the next round of the Geneva talks under the United Nations auspices, the press service of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
"Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry believes that the Astana meetings on settling the Syrian crisis, arranged with the assistance of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura, are aimed at facilitating the Geneva process. In this regard, we are confident that the next meeting of the technical group, tentatively scheduled to be held on February 15-16, will allow to create conditions for launching a new round of the Geneva peace talks under the United Nations auspices," the statement reads.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry added that the meeting of the Joint Operational Group held in Astana on February 6, had proved that this was a much needed platform set up due to the support and high credibility of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, in order to discuss issues related to strengthening the ceasefire in Syria.
"The platform provided by Kazakhstan to the interested parties as well as Astana’s peacemaking efforts have marked the contribution our country made to the process of settling the Syrian crisis as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Kazakhstan will continue to make utmost efforts and take consistent steps in order to find solutions to the global and regional security issues," the country’s foreign ministry stated.
On February 6, experts from Russia, Turkey and Iran held the first meeting of the joint technical group in the context of the Astana negotiation process involving the Syrian government and the armed opposition groups. Delegations of the United Nations and Jordan also participated in the meeting.