Damascus, July 22:Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held private talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Wednesday, Syria’s official SANA news agency reported.
A statement from al-Assad’s office provided no details about the meeting, save that Syria’s Assistant Vice President Lieutenant General Hassan Torkmani, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also attended the talks.
Before Erdogan left for Aleppo, the prime minister restated Turkey’s willingness to act as an intermediary in Syrian-Israeli peace talks.
“New requests regarding this process may come up,” Erdogan told reporters before he left for Syria. “In fact, they have already started to come.”
Turkey had previously offered to broker Syrian-Israeli talks, provided they focus on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau at the border of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.
Israel occupied the plateau in the 1967 Middle East war.
Turkish-mediated talks between Syria and Israel broke down last summer, and Turkish-Israeli relations were badly strained by Israel’s January offensive in the Gaza Strip.
In the following February, Erdogan angrily walked out of a panel that including Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
—Agencies