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May 4th, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S.-American counterpart Donald Trump discussed the fourth round of Astana talks aimed to bringing peace to war-torn Syria.
Mohammead Alloush during the previous round of Astana talks in January 2017.
Putin and Trump discussed the upcoming, fourth round of Astana talks during a telephone conversation on Tuesday. The White House subsequently issued a statement saying that the two “agreed that the suffering in Syria has gone on for far too long and that all parties must do all they can to end the violence” and that the U.S. would send a representative to the ceasefire talks in the Kazakhstani capital on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Kremlin stated that the phone call touched on the issue of “a real settlement process” and that “It was agreed to bolster the dialogue between the heads of the two nations’ foreign policy agencies in an effort to find ways to stabilise the ceasefire and make it durable and manageable. .. The aim is to create preconditions for launching a real settlement process in Syria.”
The previous talks in Astana have been focused on brokering a ceasefire between Syrian government and allied forces on one hand and so-called moderate, armed rebel factions with the exception of the self-proclaimed Islamic State and Al-Qaeda-linked groups like Jabhat al-Nusra. An agreement on a ceasefire was been brokered by the three guarantors Russia, Turkey and Iran.
Representatives from the United Nations and Jordan also will attend. “UN Special Envoy de Mistura will be joining the high-level meeting on Syria in Astana,” read a UN statement. De Mistura has been serving as mediator for the more politically oriented Geneva talks, which had been running concurrently to the Astana talks. The UN added that “He will be accompanied by a technical delegation of UN experts who have been present in previous Astana meetings and will continue to bring to the table the considerable expertise of the UN on ceasefire issues and confidence-building”.
Syrian government negotiator Bashar al-Jaafari will lead the Damascus’ delegation, according to a statement from Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry, while Mohammed Alloush, the head of the organization Jaysh al-Islam will head the delegation of the Syrian armed opposition. The FM statement did not indicate what other groups would comprise the rebel delegation.
Since 2011, over 400,000 people have died in Syria and approximately half of the population has been forced to seek refuge in other countries. Tensions and fighting between the Syrian government and the opposition forces especially a cohort of foreign-backed organizations and foreign fighters have continued amid a ceasefire agreement that came into effect on December 30, 2016.
The previous three meetings this year have been criticized for being non-productive with the opposition pulling out of the last round of talks. “We have called for the activation of the ceasefire’s agreement. Unfortunately, as of the moment I am speaking with you, bombing of some areas in Syria continues by the regime. Whatever is said on this agreement is just talks and in reality it has not borne fruit,” Alloush told reporters on March 14.
CH/L – nsnbc 03.05.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/05/03/putin-and-trump-discussed-4th-astana-talks-on-syria/
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