The Syrian president announced that he will not meet with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, unless Turkey withdraws its forces from northern Syria.
Assad said that "(any assembly) is related to reaching the stage of Turkey's formation, in which it is clearly and without any ambiguity ready for the complete withdrawal from Syrian territory".
The Syrian president added that Turkey has "stopped supporting terrorism", referring to the militant groups that control the northern regions of Syria, some of which receive training and support from Turkey.
Assad added: "This is the only situation in which there can be a meeting between Erdoğan and Erdoğan."
He added questioningly: "Other than that, what is the value of the meeting if it does not achieve final results for the war in Syria?"
A source in the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the meeting of deputy foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria, which was scheduled for this week, has been postponed to a date yet to be determined.
And the source said that the meeting was postponed "for technical reasons", I don't know the details.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu had mentioned last week that the deputy foreign ministers of the four countries will meet this week in Moscow before scheduled talks between the foreign ministers at a later date in order to resolve the crisis in Syria.
Cavishoglu said, after meeting Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir Abdollahian last week, that Iran expressed its desire to join the talks between Turkey, Syria and Russia, and that Turkey agreed to it.
In this context, the Turkish Anatolia Agency pointed out that the meeting of deputy ministers would be held on March 15 and 16.
Turkey has troops in Syria and continues to supports and/or supplies armed groups controlled the northwest of Syria and a strip in the north, the rest of the territories outside the government control remain under the US and Kurdish forces; as the map below shows.
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