Al Arabiya, 3 Dec 2012 – Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a landmark visit to Istanbul on Monday to discuss their differences over the crisis in Syria.

The visit follows a delay because of tensions between the two countries over the 20-month-old Syrian conflict and speculation that the Russian president might postpone his long-awaited trip due to a back injury.

But the visit, which marks Putin’s first trip outside Russia since he visited Tajikistan on October 5, has been confirmed by both Turkish and Russian officials.

Syria is expected to figure high on the agenda during Putin’s talks with Turkish leaders.
“The negotiations are to touch upon a series of urgent international and regional issues including reconciliation in the Middle East, the situation in the Gaza Strip, the crisis in Syria, as well as cooperation,” Putin’s foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said in a statement.

Turkey and Russia are at loggerheads over how to tackle the bloody crackdown in Syria, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives according to monitoring groups.

Those tensions came to a head in October when Turkey intercepted a Syrian plane en route from Moscow to Damascus on suspicion that it had military cargo, drawing an angry response from Russia.

Ankara said the cargo contained military equipment destined for the Syrian defense ministry. Moscow insisted it was dual-purpose radar equipment which was not banned by international conventions.

Turkey, once an ally of the Damascus regime, has become one of its fiercest critics. But Moscow remains one of the few allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, routinely blocking resolutions against his regime in the U.N. Security Council.
NATO
Meanwhile, a top U.S. official said Monday that even if NATO foreign ministers approve Turkey’s request to deploy Patriot missiles on the border with Syria as expected, it will still take some weeks to get them in place.

Russia objects to Turkey’s request to NATO for the deployment of Patriot missiles near its volatile border with Syria. It has warned that such a move could spark a broader conflict that would draw in the western military alliance.

But Turkey insists the U.S.-made Patriots would be used for purely defensive purposes, and NATO’s response is expected this week.

The United States was “hopeful that NATO will be in a position to respond positively and agree to help Turkey bolster its air defenses,” a senior State Department official said.

But he told reporters travelling with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that, even if NATO foreign ministers give the green light at their talks in Brussels this week, “it wouldn’t be an absolutely immediate deployment.”

“If NATO takes a positive decision to do it… I think it would still probably be at least a matter of weeks,” the official said, asking to remain anonymous, as Clinton arrived in the Czech Republic on the first stop of a five-day Europe trip.

The missiles, made by the U.S. giant Lockheed Martin, would likely be supplied by Germany, The Netherlands or the United States.

A site survey being carried out along with German and Dutch experts still needs to be completed, the U.S. official said.

“NATO might agree to do this but any contributions of Patriot missiles would be national decisions by the countries that are providing them. It hasn’t happened yet, and it’s not likely to happen by Tuesday,” the U.S. official said.

He stressed the NATO talks in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday, due to be attended by Clinton, may approve the deployment but “what I wouldn’t expect is a very concrete outcome on details like numbers, and sites.”

“The site survey needs to do its work before we’ll be in a position to say exactly how many Patriots or where they might go, and for how long.”

Logistically it would also take time to deploy the batteries and install them.

Military sources in Turkey have said NATO is considering the deployment of up to six Patriot batteries, with some 300-400 foreign troops to operate them.

The official also ruled out the notion that deploying the defensive missiles would lead to a de-facto safe haven for rebels and refugees along Turkey’s border with Syria.

And he said the issue of whether to set up a no-fly zone to help the opposition seeking to topple President Assad was not “on the agenda for any NATO talks this week.”