CIS

Home page

CIS

Russian, U.S. diplomats to meet in early November for Geneva-II preparations

23 October 2013 23:50 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Russian and U.S. diplomats in charge of steering an international conference on Syria will discuss preparations early in November, a senior Russian diplomat said Wednesday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

"The meeting is to be held on Nov. 5," Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying.

According to the diplomat, the participants of the meeting will discuss preparations for the Geneva-II conference aimed at ending a conflict that has killed 100,000 people since March 2011.

UN Secretary General's Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who has been touring the Middle East region's key states, including Syria, is going to brief the participants on the results of his recent trip.

From the Russian side, Gatilov and his colleague Mikhail Bogdanov and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman from the U.S. side will also take part in the meeting.

This will be the third pre-conference meeting of the U.S. and Russian diplomats. The two previous meetings took place in June.

On Tuesday, UN Under Secretary General for political affairs Jeffrey Feltman said that the United Nations was "working hard" to convene an international conference on Syria in Geneva in mid- November.

The Geneva-I conference was held on June 30, 2012 with the adoption of a communique, which sought to find a diplomatic resolution of Syria's prolonged conflicts.