{"id":245091,"date":"2020-02-15T22:26:25","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T03:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=245091"},"modified":"2020-02-15T22:26:25","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T03:26:25","slug":"turkey-russia-to-discuss-grave-situation-in-syrias-idlib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/02\/15\/turkey-russia-to-discuss-grave-situation-in-syrias-idlib\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey, Russia to discuss grave situation in Syria’s Idlib"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Idlib province are scrambling to escape a widening, multi-front offensive by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces. (File Photo By TUBS [GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)]<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>MUNICH \u2014 A Turkish delegation will travel to Russia on Monday to discuss the situation in Syria’s Idlib province amid mounting fears of a humanitarian disaster there, Turkey’s foreign minister said.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Idlib province are scrambling to escape a widening, multi-front offensive by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat matters is today around 1 million people from Idlib have been moving towards our border,\u201d Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement Saturday after a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump in which they discussed Syria and other topics. \u201cWe are already hosting 3.5-4 million people. Unfortunately we are not in a position of accepting this another 1 million.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said after meeting his German counterpart on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that 2 million people could head for Turkey’s border with Syria if no cease-fire is achieved.<\/p>\n

He said a Turkish delegation was due to visit Moscow on Monday to talk discuss the situation in Idlib, much of which remains in rebel hands. The meeting follows previous visits by a Russian delegation to Ankara. Russia supports Assad, while Turkey backs the opposition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are already people coming to our border and, with Germany’s support, we are going to build temporary shelters but these are temporary solutions,\u201d Cavusoglu said. \u201cWe need a cease-fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he pushed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was also in Munich, for Russia to lean on Assad’s government to stop the fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very worried that this is going become a humanitarian catastrophe if the fighting there doesn’t stop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cavusoglu said later Saturday he held a positive meeting with Lavrov.<\/p>\n

The Russian foreign minister told the Munich conference after that meeting that parts of Idlib remain \u201cone of the last hotbeds of terrorism, at least the only one on the west bank of the Euphrates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lavrov said that agreements between Moscow and Ankara \u201cimply both a cease-fire and a demilitarized zone, but most importantly drawing a line between the normal opposition and terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese agreements do not mean the hard fighting against the terrorist the threat will stop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said at a news conference that Russia is the key to stopping the crisis since it provides the Syrian government with aerial support.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia offers various excuses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Roth acknowledged the presence of thousands of jihadists in Idlib but said \u201cthat does not justify the indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is needed now as a matter of humanitarian concern for the people of Idlib and as a matter of basic avoidance of another refugee crisis, is firm pressure on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to stop,\u201d he said. He urged Europe to exert that pressure.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Ipek Yezdani in Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MUNICH \u2014 A Turkish delegation will travel to Russia on Monday to discuss the situation in Syria’s Idlib province amid …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":96784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-geir-moulson","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245092,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245091\/revisions\/245092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}