Syrian foreign minister to discuss fight against IS, political process during visit to Moscow

MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem is arriving in Moscow on Wednesday. During his visit he will meet with speaker of Russia’s State Duma Sergey Naryshkin. The talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are expected to be held on November 27. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited the Russian capital on October 20. Before that Muallem travelled to Molscow on June 29. It was then that Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward the initiative of creating a broad anti-terrorist front. The Russian-Syrian agenda covers all aspects of the crisis in this Arab republic. This also applies to the results of two international meetings in Vienna, particularly in terms of launching the political process. The official Damascus has formed the delegation for the talks with the opposition a long time ago. The participants in the November 14 Vienna meeting agreed that representatives of the government and its opponents had to hold consultations in the near future before the end of this year. The opposition has not formed a broad representative coalition. Besides, there is no unanimity among the external players on who should be regarded as the acceptable opponents of the regime for the inter-Syrian dialogue. The list of the terrorist organizations with whom there will be no contacts and whom the ceasefire will not affect, has not been agreed either. So far, the stop list includes only Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra (outlawed in Russia). Some external players are in no hurry to recognize some "moderate extremists" as terrorists. Read more