MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/. A meeting between the top diplomats of Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Iran is planned to be held in the near future, Russian presidential envoy for the Middle East and African countries and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Monday.

"[The meeting] is in the works. We are setting a date," he told journalists.

"The sooner the better," he said when asked whether this meeting would take place in early May or before.

According to the diplomat, the date should make sense for each of the four ministers. "There was no official date, so we didn’t postpone anything. We are coordinating [the date] now. There have been various proposals, but each of the four ministers has his own schedule," he said.

Earlier, it was reported that the senior diplomats from the four countries discussed preparations for a four-party ministerial meeting at their consultations in Moscow on April 3-4.

The process of normalizing relations between Ankara and Damascus kicked off on December 28, 2022, when the Russian, Syrian and Turkish defense ministers met in Moscow. The ministers agreed to set up a joint trilateral commission. These consultations are to be followed by a meeting of the countries’ foreign ministers who will look at holding talks between Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Bashar Assad of Syria. Later, it was announced that the top Iranian diplomat will take part too.

Erdogan said on December 15, 2022 that he had suggested to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that a trilateral meeting with the Syrian leader be organized. This summit, in his words, is to be preceded by talks between the countries’ special services, defense and foreign ministers.