Turkish concerns over N. Syria must be resolved: Iran

By Muhammet Kursun and Tolga Akbaba</p> <p>TEHRAN/ANKARA (AA) – Turkey’s anxieties regarding northern Syria must be resolved through negotiations, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday.</p> <p>At a press conference held in Tehran, Bahram Qassemi noted Ankara’s earlier pledges to respect Syria’s territorial integrity.</p> <p>“Turkey understandably has concerns about northern Syria, which must be resolved through negotiations within the framework of the Astana process,” he said.</p> <p>At a 2017 meeting in the Kazakh capital, the three guarantor countries — Russia, Turkey, and Iran — agreed to establish a network of de-escalation zones inside Syria in which acts of aggression were to be expressly prohibited.</p> <p>In a related development on Monday, Hossein Salami, second-in-command of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, was quoted as saying that Turkey appeared to be “acting independently” of the U.S.</p> <p>“Ankara now appears to be acting independently of U.S. policy,” Salami said. </p> <p>“Meanwhile,” he added, “the U.S. is moving towards extinction, despite its appearance of power — a fact that is betrayed by its planned withdrawal from Syria.” </p> <p>Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected severity.