Iran, Russia, Syrian FMs to meet in Moscow
TEHRAN
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is expected to also hold a one-to-one meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said late Oct. 26.
Iran and Russia are key financial and military supporters of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
EU governments put 10 more people under sanctions over the crisis in Syria, targeting high-ranking military officials and senior figures linked to al-Assad, the bloc said in a statement on Oct. 27.
The European Union will publish the names of the 10 people sanctioned on Oct. 28. On Oct. 27 it said only that they were “high-ranking military officials and senior figures linked to the regime.”
France and Britain pushed hard for the asset freezes and travel bans as a way to respond to the bombing of hundreds of civilians, including children, in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo, where Western-backed rebels are holding out against Syrian and Russian air strikes.
However, Paris and London have been unable to persuade their EU counterparts to impose similar measures on Russian military officials over the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo after Rome resisted, worried about upsetting business ties with Moscow.
Russia on Oct. 27 said it had nothing to do with air strikes on a school in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province that killed 22 children.
“The Russian Federation has nothing to do with this terrible tragedy, with this attack,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, adding that Moscow demanded an immediate investigation.
Zakharova said claims that Russian and Syrian warplanes had conducted the deadly air strikes in Idlib on Oct. 26 were “a lie.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said Oct. 27 that Russian and Syrian warplanes had not flown closer than 10 kilometers (6.21 miles) of Syria’s Aleppo for nine days.