Egypt hosts 1st regional meeting on Syria crisis

Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt met in Cairo yesterday to find a common way to end violence in Syria, in a first, purely regional attempt at dealing with the deteriorating situation since the revolt begun in March 2011 as the details of the Egyptian plan began to emerge. Turkey’s former ambassador to Damascus, Omer Onhon, joined the four-way contact group meeting in Cairo, the Hurriyet Daily News learned from a diplomatic source. Delegations from Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia met "in a bid to confront the deteriorating situation in Syria and put an end to the suffering of the Syrian people and an end to the bloodshed through a political process," the Egyptian ministry said in a statement, Agence France-Presse reported. "We have already agreed to take part in this process. Turkey joins any initiative seeking to end the bloodshed in Syria," a Turkish diplomatic source told the Daily News yesterday. Turkish and Egyptian foreign ministers, Ahmet Davutoglu and Mohamed Kamal Amr, have been in close contact since Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi announced his four-way plan to solve the Syrian problem last month. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Morsi will meet in New York during the U.N. General Assembly. Yesterday’s meeting was considered to be a preparatory meeting in which four parties had hoped to outline their own positions with regard to future phases of the Egyptian initiative. It was not known whether they would agree on the context of the proposal’s future steps when the Daily News went to print.