Lavrov ready to meet with Turkish counterpart in Belgrade

NICOSIA, December 2. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday he is ready to meet with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial Council due on December 3-4 in Belgrade. "The Turkish side has been insistently calling for organising a face-to-face meeting with the Turkish foreign minister on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial Council," Lavrov said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart in Nicosia. "We will not avoid this contact. We will listen to what (Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut) Cavusoglu says. Maybe something new compared with what has been said in public." Lavrov said he spoke with his Turkish counterpart the next day after the downing of the Russian Su-24 jet. "I heard nothing new compared with what the Turkish leadership said in public, justifying its unacceptable criminal act." Relations between Russia and Turkey hit a low after the incident on November 24 when a Turkish F-16 fighter jet brought down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M bomber, which, Ankara alleges, violated the country’s airspace near the Syrian border. The Russian Defense Ministry said the warplane was flying over Syrian territory and had never violated Turkey’s airspace. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Turkey’s attack will have "serious consequences" for Russian-Turkish relations. Putin said Ankara’s attack against the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 plane, which took part in Russia’s antiterrorism operation in Syria and did not present a threat to Turkey, was a "stab in Russia’s back" delivered by terrorists’ accomplices. Late last month, Putin signed a decree on a provisional ban on employing Turkish citizens in Russia as of January 1, 2016. The same decree suspends visa-free traveling between the two countries and imposes restrictions on the imports of certain commodities from Turkey. Read more