Parliament Speaker's advisor: No hope pinned on Lausanne meeting

Iranian Parliament Speaker's senior advisor, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, underlined that no hope can be pinned on meetings like Lausanne while overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is the main focus of some of its participants.

"Believing in the political solution is the only way to end the crisis in Syria and as long as certain countries, including the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar insist on Bashar al-Assad's departure from power, we cannot be optimistic about the results of the Lausanne meeting," Amir Abdollahian said on Sunday.

"I believe that as long as all those who sit to the negotiating table don’t believe that the crisis in Syria only has a political solution, we cannot hope for the Lausanne meeting to yield results," he added.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Seyyed Abbas Araqchi announced on Saturday that Tehran decided to participate in the Saturday ministerial talks on Syria in Lausanne after its conditions were met by other parties to the negotiations.

"The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) is an international group to study the Syrian issue which has 17 members but the group hasn’t been so much successful in its meetings so far," Araqchi told reporters in Tehran.

EA