By Diyar Guldogan
ANKARA (AA) – President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Thursday a cease-fire agreement in Syria had been reached under guarantees from Russia and Turkey.
“Peace talks are ready to begin,” Putin was quoted as saying by the country’s official TASS news agency.
His remarks came in Moscow during a meeting with Russia’s foreign and defense ministers. Putin said three documents had been signed.
The first was the cease-fire deal between the Syrian government and armed opposition groups. The second was measures to monitor the cease-fire and the third one was the declaration of “readiness” to start peace talks on a settlement.
Putin said Russia, Iran and Turkey’s Dec. 20 trilateral meeting in Moscow saw all three countries committing themselves to be “guarantors” of any peace process settlement in Syria.
The president described the agreement on Syria as “fragile” and said “a lot of work” had been done in collaboration with Turkish partners.
He said on Dec. 23 that Russia, Turkey and Iran had agreed to an earlier proposal to bring together representatives of the Syrian regime and opposition in Kazakhstan.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has expressed his “readiness” to provide a platform for talks in Astana to solve the long-standing crisis.
Syria has been locked in a devastating civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests — which erupted as part of the Arab Spring uprisings — with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-torn country, according to the UN.
