Tehran: Presidents of Iran, Russia and Turkey are meeting in Tehran to talk about how to shape the future of a country torn apart by years of civil war amid a possible military offensive to retake the last rebel-held bastion of Idlib.
At Friday’s summit, Hassan Rouhani, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are expected to sign an agreement about ongoing military cooperation in Syria, the rights of return for refugees displaced by the conflict, and the creation of a committee to investigate the fates of people arrested by the government or who went missing during the conflict, according to Iran’s foreign ministry.
Syria’s civil war, in its eighth year, has seen more than half a million Syrians dead, 11 million – more than half the country’s population – either internally displaced or living as refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe.
Syrian President Bashar al Assad is the clear winner. But he now presides over a country where large areas more closely resemble fields of rubble than cities or towns.
