8th round Syria peace talks gets underway in Kazakhstan

The eighth round of peace talks aimed at ending the Syria conflict began Thursday in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana.

Astana hosts another two-day meeting attended by representatives from Russia, Turkey and Iran, which are the guarantor states that brokered a cease-fire in Syria in December 2016, leading to the Astana peace talks that are running parallel to Geneva talks.

The Turkish delegation is chaired by the deputy undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry, Sedat Onal, while Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian president's special envoy for Syria, leads his delegation, and Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi Ansari heads Iran’s.

The bilateral talks between the delegations started at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Turkish delegation had a meeting with the Russian team. Onal and the Iranian delegation are expected to hold a bilateral meeting at 3.00 p.m. local time (0900GMT).

Representatives of the Syrian regime, armed opposition groups, as well as delegations from the UN, Jordan and the U.S. also participate in the talks.

Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry announced that UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura would attend the meeting on Friday.

The talks are also to address the release of captives and hostages, the clearing of landmines, the inspection of cease-fire violations in the de-escalation zones and the preparation for a Syrian National Dialogue Congress, which is expected to be held in Russia's coastal city of Sochi in the near future.

The Syrian armed opposition is expected to bring the issue of the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus to the table.

Thursday's bilateral and multilateral talks will take place in a closed-door format. A plenary meeting is scheduled for Friday.