Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia and the United States have decided to encourage all parties involved in the Syria conflict to hold peace talks in Geneva.
Putin made the remarks on Monday after bilateral talks with US President Barack Obama at the G8 summit in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. He said, “Of course our opinions do not converge, but all of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria.”
“We agreed to push the parties to the negotiating table,” he added.
Obama said that the US and Russia have “different perspectives” with regard to Syria.
“But we share an interest in reducing the violence, securing chemical weapons, and ensuring that they are neither used nor are they subject to proliferation, and that we want to try to resolve the issue through political means if possible,” he added.
“So we will instruct our teams to continue to work on the potential of a Geneva follow-up,” he said.
Obama and Putin also issued a joint statement saying that they will hold talks in Moscow on September 3 and 4, ahead of the September 5-6 G20 summit in St. Petersburg.
On May 7, Russia and the United States agreed to convene an international conference on Syria, which would serve as a follow-up to an earlier Geneva meeting held in June 2012.
UN-Arab League Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said on June 7 that the meeting might be held in July. The talks had originally been scheduled to be held in June.
The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of government forces, have been killed.
Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.
The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — are supporting the militants.
In addition, several international human rights organizations say the militants operating in Syria have committed war crimes.
IA/HG
This article originally appeared on: Press TV