Gholamali Khoshroo also on Sunday called on the United Nations Security Council to register Iran’s statement on the peaceful settlement of the Syria crisis as an official document at the international body.
He made the request in a note sent to Matthew Rycroft, the president of the Security Council for the month of March. The note was released through a Telegram channel by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari.
Khoshroo said the Islamic Republic welcomes the peaceful settlement of the armed conflict in Syria as stressed in a joint statement by the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey in Moscow on December 20, 2016 and the communique issued at the end of two-day intra-Syrian talks which concluded in the Kazakh capital of Astana on January 24.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Russian and Turkish counterparts Sergei Lavrov and Mevlut Cavusoglu, respectively, issued a joint statement at the end of their trilateral meeting in Moscow on agreed steps to revitalize the political process to end the Syria crisis.
Iran, Russia, and Turkey organized the Astana talks. The three also played intermediary roles at the talks, where the United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was also present.
Khoshroo said Iran has taken effective measures at the request of the Syrian government in fighting terrorism and dispatching humanitarian aid to civilians with the purpose of putting an end to the ongoing crisis in Syria and in line with the Islamic Republic’s principled policies, which mandate respect for the Arab state’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
He added that Iran would help Syrian army and popular forces support to the implementation of the ceasefire in the country.
The Iranian envoy emphasized that terrorist groups mentioned in the UN Security Council Resolution 2254, including Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front, are not subject to the ceasefire.
Conflict began in Syria in 2011, when foreign states opposing the Syrian administration started pouring arms and militants into the Arab country. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict so far.
/SR
