NUR-SULTAN, November 10. /TASS/. The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan is looking into the possibility of organizing a meeting of foreign ministers from states guarantors of the Astana process (Russia, Turkey and Iran), the country’s Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Foreign Affairs Mukhtar Tleuberdi told reporters on Wednesday.
The meeting is to be held during an international conference on Syria, scheduled to take place in the Kazakh capital of Nur-Sultan in mid-December.
"The possibility of organizing a meeting of foreign ministers from the guarantor nations within the framework of a regular Astana process conference is also being considered," Tleuberdi said.
He said the exact date of the conference in Nur-Sultan is still being coordinated, and its agenda is yet to be approved.
Commenting on the format of the upcoming meeting, the minister expressed hope that it would be held in the offline format.
"We expect it to be an offline meeting. Obviously, such negotiations must be conducted in person. In fact, the delegations have always been fairly small, so we don’t expect the number of participants to exceed figures recommended by Kazakhstan’s chief sanitary doctor’s prescript," he said.
The 16th international high-level meeting on Syria, which took place in Kazakhstan's capital of Nur-Sultan on July 7-8, brought together the delegations of the guarantor countries, the Syrian government and the armed opposition. The parties discussed the situation in Syria, the international community's assistance to the country, the prospects for the resumption of the Syrian Constitutional Committee's activities and confidence-building measures, including prisoner swaps, the liberation of hostages and the search for missing persons.