Erdogan to meet with foreign ministers of Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's meeting with the foreign ministers of Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran is scheduled to take place on Friday at 16:00 Moscow time at the Dolmabahce presidential office in Istanbul, it will be closed to the media, the Turkish leader's office told RIA Novosti.
The foreign ministers of the states participating in the 3+3 regional platform on the South Caucasus will meet in Istanbul on Friday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Turkey on Thursday evening. According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Lavrov will hold a number of bilateral meetings on the margins of the event.
“The meeting (of Erdogan with foreign ministers - ed.) is scheduled at 16:00 Moscow time at the Dolmabahce presidential office. It is closed to the media,” the office specified.
The launch of a six-sided (Russia, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia) format of consultations on cooperation in the South Caucasus and the Middle East was proposed in late 2020 by Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Azerbaijan and Turkey. Georgia has been repeatedly invited to participate in this format, but it has not yet joined its work.
The first meeting of the format was held in December 2021 in Moscow at the level of deputy foreign ministers of Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey and the director general of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and in October 2023 a ministerial meeting was held in Tehran.
Zakharova said on October 16 that Moscow views the 3+3 format as an effective mechanism for coordinating the efforts of regionalists to achieve lasting peace and stability in the South Caucasus and the Middle East, and an opportunity to promote mutually beneficial cooperation in trade and economic, transport and logistics, cultural and humanitarian spheres.
Earlier, Moscow has repeatedly expressed concern over attempts by Western countries to draw the South Caucasus into geopolitical confrontation. The Russian Foreign Ministry noted that the interference of extra-regional forces in the affairs of the South Caucasus and the desire to drive a wedge between the states of the region and their neighbors can have the most negative consequences for regional stability, security and economic development.
Reprinted from https://ria.ru/
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