MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. Russia is proposing that Syria and Turkey return to an agreement that allows Turkey to deploy troops to fight terrorists on Syrian soil but in coordination with Damascus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"We have suggested in informal contacts to return to the philosophy of 1998, when the Adana agreement was signed," the top diplomat said at a meeting with students and faculty of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University). "This agreement assumed that there was a terrorist threat and that, in order to counter this terrorist threat, Turkey would have the right, in agreement with Damascus, to send its anti-terrorist structures up to a certain perimeter inside Syrian territory. This agreement is still in force, no one has denounced it," Lavrov added.
According to the foreign minister, the normalization problems stem from "another reason": "the illegal activities of the US in northeastern Syria." "It is the United States that decisively fuels the separatism of radical Kurdish organizations, which the Turks call a threat to their security, so these processes are connected," the top Russian diplomat pointed out.
"All documents of the Astana troika <...> say that all of us, including Iran, Turkey and Russia, of course, respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria," Lavrov recalled. "Turkey has always signed these documents," he pointed out.