Iran Press/ Middle East: Russia and Turkey have agreed to jointly police a contentious buffer zone in north-eastern Syria in a deal they say will end bloodshed along the border, just hours before a ceasefire was due to expire.
Kurdish forces leaving the towns of 'Tel Rifaat' and 'Manbij' are also among the deals agreed between President Erdogan and Putin in the Sochi meeting on Tuesday.
"Turkish and Russian troops will conduct joint patrols in northern Syria within 10 km of the border," Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, adding that Ankara would also work with Moscow for the safe return of Syrian refugees now in Turkey.
Erdogan was speaking at a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin following lengthy talks on the situation in Syria, according to Reuters report.
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According the deal, the YPG is set to withdraw from the area in 150 hours starting from 12 p.m. of Oct. 23.
The memorandum was announced following a six-hour-meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Erdogan on Oct. 22.
According to the agreement that Putin hailed as 'momentous', Russian military police and Syrian border guards will enter the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border, outside the area of operation called 'Peace Spring', to facilitate the removal of People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their weapons to the depth of 30 kilometers from the Turkish-Syrian border.
Following the end of the aforementioned 150 hours, joint Russian-Turkish patrols will start in the west and the east of the area of Turkish Operation with a depth of 10 kilometers, except Qamishli city.
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has slammed his Turkish counterpart Erdogan as a 'thief' for attacking his country and reiterated a pledge to retake all areas lost by his government during the civil war, state media reported.
He made the remarks during a visit to the front lines of the war, in an area in the northwestern Idlib province recently retaken by Syrian government forces from Turkey-backed rebels.
"Erdogan is a thief and is now stealing our land," state media quoted al-Assad as saying. "The Turkish president 'robbed factories, wheat, and fuel and is today stealing territory'," he said in an apparent reference to Turkey's cross-border operations into Syria in the last few years.
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