Iranian FM: Negotiations among Iran, Turkey, Egypt on Syria Yield Fruitful Results

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that the negotiations among Tehran, Ankara and Cairo on the situation in Syria have yielded fruitful results, and added that Tehran is still in consultations with Egyptian officials in this regard.

“The leaders of Iran, Egypt and Turkey have had consultations over this issue and we have reached good results and Tehran is due to inform the officials in Cairo of its view on Egypt’s plan (for the Syrian crisis),” Salehi told reporters on the sidelines of an international conference on ‘Iran and Regional Cooperation in Eurasia’ in Tehran on Monday.

He said that Iran is also in continued consultations with Russia and China on the Syrian crisis, adding that the three countries enjoy common positions on the issue.

“The dissidents and the Syrian government should hold talks with each other without any preconditions,” Salehi underlined.

Earlier this month, presidents of Iran, Egypt and Turkey in a meeting in Cairo underscored the necessity for an immediate stop in the bloodshed, violence and crisis in Syria.

In their trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit, Ahmadinejad, Mursi and Gul proposed several initiatives and discussed various issues related to solving the Syrian crisis, but they were all agreed on the point that the massacres and bloodshed there needed to end immediately.

The three political leaders at the meeting commissioned the three countries foreign ministers to have a series of meetings to sum up the discussed issues and present them to the concerned parties and officials in Syria so that the crisis and bloodshed there would hopefully come to an end.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes.

The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

In October 2011, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria.

The US daily, Washington Post, reported in May that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups battling the President Bashar al-Assad’s government have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States.

The newspaper, quoting opposition activists and US and foreign officials, reported that Obama administration officials emphasized the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the Persian Gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.

According to the report, material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border.

Opposition activists who several months ago said the rebels were running out of ammunition said in May that the flow of weapons – most bought on the black market in neighboring countries or from elements of the Syrian military in the past – has significantly increased after a decision by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Persian Gulf states to provide millions of dollars in funding each month.