New round of Syria peace talks starts in Astana

The Kazakh Foreign Ministry said all participants for the talks had arrived on October 30 for two days of bilateral and multilateral meetings.

The Astana talks - sponsored by Russia, Iran, and Turkey – focus on ceasefire and other battlefield matters.

Representatives of the Assad regime and opposition groups attend the sessions, and the United States, the United Nations, and Jordan generally send observers.

Orient News’s correspondent, Ammar Ezz, reporting from Astana, said, Astana talks would begin to primarily discuss the files of detainees at Assad regime’s prisons and the file of the so-called abductees.

There will be also a discussion on the mechanism of removing mines in in some areas. 

The issue of establishing areas of de-escalation will be addressed more closely.   

On October 26, the UN’s Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, announced his intention to convene the next round of separate negotiations in Geneva on November 28, the eighth round of talks since early last year.