Immediately after a three-day visit to Pakistan, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday began a tour of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan for high-profile gatherings. Heading a diplomatic delegation, the top diplomat left Tehran for Baku on Wednesday for four-party talks with his counterparts from Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia, Tasnim News Agency reported. He will then leave Baku for the Kazakh capital Astana to attend a trilateral meeting with Turkish and Russian foreign ministers, Mevlut Cavusoglu and Sergey Lavrov, as part of the Astana talks on Syria. The Astana peace process is aimed at ending a crisis that erupted in Syria in 2011. Last week, diplomats from Iran, Russia, Turkey and the UN attended a series of intensive meetings in Geneva to discuss ways to restore peace and stability to the war-ravaged Arab country. In September 2017, Iran, Russia and Turkey—the three guarantor states in peace talks—agreed on details of four "de-escalation zones" in an effort to help ease fierce fighting in Syria.
