MUNICH (AP) — Turkey’s foreign minister says a Turkish delegation will hold talks in Russia on Monday on the situation in Syria’s Idlib province amid mounting fears of a humanitarian disaster there.
Hundreds of thousands in Idlib province are scrambling to escape a widening, multi-front assault by President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Saturday after meeting his German counterpart on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that 2 million people could head for Turkey’s border with Syria if no cease-fire is achieved.
He said that a Turkish delegation was due to visit Moscow on Monday in order to talk about the situation in Idlib, much of which remains in rebel hands. The meeting follows previous visits by a Russian delegation to Ankara. Russia supports Assad, while Turkey backs the opposition.
“We are very worried that this is going become a humanitarian catastrophe if the fighting there doesn’t stop,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. He said he pushed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was also in Munich, for Russia to lean on Assad’s government to stop the fighting.