Zarif is scheduled to leave for Turkey on Saturday at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, Iran’s Foreign Ministry announced.
Zarif is slated to hold talks with senior Turkish officials during his trip, the ministry added.

On December 19, the Iranian and Turkish foreign ministers held a meeting in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on the sidelines of the ministerial meeting of the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation.

Zarif and Davutoglu exchanged views on Tehran-Ankara ties, multilateral issues and the ongoing developments in the Muslim world, namely the crisis in Syria.

Turkey has been one of the main supporters of the war in Syria that has killed more than 120,000 people.

On December 31, 2013, Damascus officially asked the UN Security Council to prosecute Turkey and all countries that support the militants operating in Syria.

“The Turkish authorities are systematically offering help in supplying arms to terrorists operating in a number of districts” in Syria, Syria’s Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja'afari said in a letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

SHI/SHI