DHAKA: International talks in Vienna this week will test whether Russia and Iran are ‘serious’ about finding a political solution to the war in Syria.

The Saudi foreign minister has said, Al Jazeera publishes this report on Thursday.

Adel al-Jubeir’s comments on Wednesday came after Iran announced it was accepting an invitation by the US and Russia to attend the talks in the Austrian capital.

‘If they’re serious we will know, and if they’re not serious we will also know and stop wasting time with them,’ Jubeir said at a news conference in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, with visiting British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

The two-day talks beginning on Thursday will also ‘test the intentions of the Syrians and the Russians’, Jubeir said.

Hammond said the meetings will be a chance to see if it is possible to ‘bridge the gap’ between Iran and Russia on one side, and other countries against Bashar al-Assad, on the opposite side, on the role of the Syrian president.

While Russia and Iran think Assad should be able to stand for re-election so that the Syrian people can decide on his future, Hammond said all others agree that Assad has ‘too much blood on his hands’ and should go.

Jubeir said the Saudi position had not changed. ‘There has to be certainty that Bashar al-Assad will leave’, he said.

Iran earlier confirmed that its foreign minister Javad Zarif will join his counterparts from Russia, the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia at the talks.

BDST: 1253 HRS, OCT 29, 2015
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