“Joint meetings of specialized committees of the parliaments of Russia, Turkey, and Iran will advance and harmonize approaches to achieve the difficult tasks that heads of state are accomplishing,” said Sergei Neverov
Sergey Ivanovich
, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma.
“We can safely acknowledge that the cooperation between our countries has a steady trend towards development,” he stressed, welcoming the participants of the meeting. He reminded that this year the third meeting of the chairmen of the parliaments of Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan will be held in Ankara.
The parliamentarian noted the importance of cooperation between foreign policy and defense ministries of the countries within the framework of the Astana format. According to him, this makes it possible to effectively resist international terrorists on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.
The Deputy Chairman of the State Duma invited the Turkish and Iranian colleagues to consider the idea of holding an international parliamentary conference on one of the most sensitive issues, returning of Syrian refugees home from those countries that gave them temporary shelter, this year.
“I am confident that in the framework of parliamentary diplomacy we can significantly move forward in solving this serious humanitarian problem affecting the fate of hundreds of thousands of innocent people who are forced to endure hardship and suffering,” said Sergei Neverov.
He also reminded that at a meeting of the High-Level Russian-Turkish Cooperation Council that was held on April 8 Vladimir Putin emphasized the need for vigorous agreed actions to normalize the situation in Syria in the long term.
“The agenda of the joint meeting also covers the role of parliaments in shaping the new security architecture in one of the most densely populated regions of the Eurasian continent. I believe that we can, and should, significantly move forward in this fundamental issue,” said Sergei Neverov.
The parliamentarian stressed that “Russia invariably opposes any unilateral approaches, and considers collective work to find consensus solutions in settlement of all topical crises without any exceptions by diplomatic methods based on international law and UN resolutions as the most effective and in the interest of creating a truly comprehensive, inclusive world architecture and security.“
“For such collective work, the format of regular joint meetings of our foreign affairs committees seems to me to be very effective. […] We proceed from the fact that we have launched a fundamentally new format of parliamentary cooperation between our countries. I believe that this will advance and harmonize approaches to achieve the difficult tasks that our heads of state are accomplishing, as was clearly demonstrated by the recent visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Moscow and an active dialogue at the top level between the leadership of our country and the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the interest of a peaceful and stable future of our countries and peoples,” concluded Sergei Neverov.
“The Syria dossier is still literally bleeding. Our common task is to achieve peace in this long-suffering land,” stressed Leonid Slutskiy
Slutsky 
Leonid Eduardovich , Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, during the meeting.
According to him, it is necessary to address issues of restoration of constitutional order, national economy and destroyed infrastructure of Syria.
“The role of our trilateral format will be significant in supporting the initiatives proposed by our leaders two days ago at the bilateral meeting [of the Presidents of Russia and Turkey in Moscow],” said Volkan Bozkir, Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. According to him, this meeting “will contain an important political message to the whole world that we are united in all matters where our participation in establishing peace in Syria and preserving the territorial integrity of this country is required.”
“Our parliaments should support a political settlement in Syria, it is also necessary to put an end to the presence of American troops there,” said Chairman of the Commission on National Security and Foreign Policy of the Majlis of Iran Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh.
Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs Konstantin Kosachev stressed that a joint meeting of the relevant committees is an event of historic moment. He also noted that he would not like to make this trilateral work anti-American.
“On behalf of Russia, I want to say that when we criticize the actions of the United States, we do not take an anti-American position, we are ready to interact with the US, but we criticize the one-sidedness of their approach, the model of a unipolar world led by the United States,” he explained.
