Putin: Transporting mercenaries from Idleb countryside to Libya a very dangerous development

MOSCOW, (ST)- Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that the process of transporting a lot of mercenaries from Idleb countryside to Libya is a dangerous development.

“According to the information we have, there is a large number of gunmen who were transported to Libya from the de-escalation zone in Idleb, which is a very dangerous development,” Putin said in a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Mekel in Moscow on Saturday.

He said that continuous fighting in Libya increases terrorism and undermines security and stability in the region and it will have negative impacts on Europe, calling for ceasefire and political dialogue among all concerned parties.

Several media reports confirmed that President of the Turkish regime Recep Tayyib Erdogan has sent his mercenaries and terrorists from Syria to Libya to aggravate the security situation in there and to loot the country’s resources.

 The Russian leader reaffirmed that solving the crisis in Syria should be based on Security Council Resolution No. 2254 and that only the Syrian people have the right to decide the future of their country.

He reiterated the need to uproot terrorism from Syria, restore the terrorist-held areas to the Syrian state’s sovereignty, start reconstruction and help the refugees return home.

Resolution No. 2254, adopted unanimously by the Security Council in December 2015, stresses that the Syrians should decide the future of their own country themselves without any foreign interference and that terrorist organizations are not part of any political process.

On the Iranian nuclear deal, Putin said that it is a very important issue not only in the region, but in the entire world, calling for constant commitment to the deal and to the joint plan of action.

Putin pointed out that despite the withdrawal of the United States from the Iranian nuclear deal, Iran keeps stressing that it is willing to resume full compliance with the nuclear agreement.

According to the Kremlin Press service,  Putin and Merkel discussed during  their meeting bilateral cooperation and current issues on the international agenda: the situation in Syria, Libya, escalating tensions in the Middle East and the settlement of the intra-Ukrainian conflict in the context of implementing the 2015 Minsk Package of Measures and the agreements reached at the Normandy format summit in Paris on December 9, 2019.

Hamda Mustafa