Astana-2 Document Can Be Adopted With Signatures of Ceasefire Guarantors Only

ASTANA (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — The second round of Astana talks will kick off on Thursday after being delayed because of the absence of some members of Syrian opposition.

"Guarantor states will need to be signatories, of course, " Musienko said, when asked who should sign the document.

He added that signatures of the Syrian government delegation and the armed opposition would be "an ideal situation," but said that the approval of the three ceasefire guarantor states, Russia, Turkey and Iran, would be enough for adoption.

"This all depends on signatures of the guarantor states," Musienko stressed.

On Thursday morning, spokesman of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry Anuar Zhainakov told Sputnik that the remaining members of the armed Syrian opposition delegation and the Turkish delegation had arrived in Astana for the peace talks. A source close to the negotiations told Sputnik early on Thursday that head of the Syrian armed opposition delegation Mohammed Alloush was among the people who arrived in Astana over the night.

Part of the Syrian armed opposition delegation arrived in Astana on Wednesday. Russian, Iranian, Jordanian and Syrian delegations had a number of technical meetings in the Kazakh capital on Wednesday.

Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said on Wednesday that the plenary session on Syria would begin in Astana on Thursday due to the late arrival of the Syrian opposition.

The first round of the Syria peace talks was held in Astana on January 23-24. The talks resulted in a Moscow-Tehran-Ankara agreement on the establishment of a trilateral mechanism to monitor the ceasefire in Syria.