MOSCOW, April 9. The meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Syria has been postponed to early May, Russian Ambassador to Damascus Alexander Efimov said in an interview with the Al Watan newspaper.
"The meeting, which was scheduled for Monday, has been rescheduled for early May. Contacts and consultations continue between the parties to achieve positive results on this issue," he said.
Efimov emphasized that Moscow will continue to make attempts to convene a quadripartite summit, and added that all issues between the parties can be settled in one or more rounds of negotiations. "This is a long road, but we're taking it step by step," the diplomat said.
At a press conference following meetings with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that preparations for the quadripartite summit involved, among other things, settling on dates that would be acceptable to all four ministers.
The process of restoring relations between Ankara and Damascus began on December 28, 2022, in Moscow, with meetings involving the heads of Russia's, Syria's, and Turkey's defense ministries. The parties agreed to form a joint tripartite commission during the meeting. These consultations should be followed by a meeting of foreign ministers, with the agenda including talks between Turkish and Syrian Presidents Tayyip Erdogan and Bashar al-Assad. Later, it was stated that Iran would participate in consultations.
On December 15, 2022, Erdogan told reporters that he had invited his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to a trilateral meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. According to him, this conference should follow consultations between representatives of special services, defense, and foreign ministers.