Moscow hopes that Syria will be completely liberated from Islamic State (a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia) terrorists in a couple of months, Russian president’s special envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said on Tuesday, APA reports quoting TASS.
"The situation on the ground is developing rather swiftly. The fight against Islamic State is at the final stage. We all hope that at least in one or two months there will be no [Islamic State] armed groups in Syria and there will be no settlements used by this terrorist group as its strongholds," he said at a news conference in Astana.
He said it is time to think about political settlement. "I would like to note that the Russian side sees the necessity to look for options of launching national dialogue and for these ends has announced an initiative to organize a congress of Syrian national dialogue," he said.
According to the Russian chief negotiator, various options for a venue of such a forum have been offered. "We would like to organize such an important intra-Syrian forum in Syria. But taking into account the current situation, which does not make it possible to ensure proper security, it was decided to hold this forum in Sochi (on November 18)," Lavrentyev said.
There is a lot of distorted information about prisoners exchange in Syria, he went on.
"There has emerged a lot of distorted information which in no way helps to build up trust between the conflicting parties. Various figure are cited: 15,000 women forcibly kept by the central authorities in Syrian prisons or 100,000 arrested militants who are kept there," he said.
He called to show "certain restraint" on this issue and "adequately react to such unverified reports."
"It is not in the interests of those who are really kept in prisons, both in the government-controlled territory and in territories controlled by the opposition," he stressed, adding that participants in the intra-Syrian talks will continue work on a document on forcibly kept people and exchange of bodies of those killed.
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