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Putin-Erdogan next meeting to be considered at talks in Moscow Monday - foreign minister

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the summit meeting will take place if needed

MUNICH, February 15. /TASS/. The Turkish and Russian delegations will discuss at the Monday talks in Moscow the possibility of the two presidents’ next summit meeting in the wake of the Idlib crisis, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday after his talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

"The summit meeting [between Vladimir Putin and Tayyip Recep Erdogan] will take place if needed, but at first we will see how the meeting in Moscow will go off. We will be discussing all the issues," he said.

"We have touched upon all the issues [on Idlib - TASS] in a positive tonality with Sergey Lavrov," Cavusoglu went on to say. "We will take a decision on Monday whether the presidents’ new meeting is needed."

Earlier, Cavusoglu said that the Turkish delegation would travel to Russia on Monday to hold talks about the situation in the Syrian region of Idlib where the situation deteriorated dramatically after Russian and Turkish militaries’ another attempt to enforce a ceasefire had been met by terrorists intensified their attacks. As a result, military specialists from Russia and Turkey were killed. The Syrian army retaliated, striking extremists and capturing the town of Saraqib near Idlib on February 5.

In the morning of February 11, the Syrian opposition supported by Turkey launched mass-scale attacks on Syrian army troops on two fronts - the town of Saraqib and the community of Nayrab situated to the north of Saraqib in Idlib. The opposition’s offensive was carried out with the fire support from the Turkish artillery. Jabhat al-Nusra (banned in Russia) terrorists took an active part in the fighting. Nevertheless, Syrian forces repelled these attacks, while militants suffered huge losses in those who died and was injured.