Turkey seeks to accelerate Turkish-US process of training Syrian rebels

Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday asked the United States for accelerating negotiations between the two countries on training and equipping Syrian opposition fighters.

Cavusoglu made the remarks at a joint press conference with visiting Hungarian Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Peter Szijjarto in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

"Our negotiations with the U.S. on 'train-equip' continue. We previously declared that a framework was determined on political level. Negotiations started on the level of military and security officials. Now there is an improvement on this progress," Cavusoglu said.

Cavusoglu said that when he met with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Brazil and with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in London during a meeting on Syria last week, he offered to accelerate "train-equip" negotiations, adding that "we also offered participation of politicians to the talks. Both of them reacted positively to our proposals. Process is on the course and there is no contradiction."

Cavusoglu said last month that Turkey could start the training of Syrian opposition before March 2015 as part of the efforts to degrade and defeat Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria.

"We have reached a clarified framework on training and equipping of Syrian opposition in negotiations with the U.S.," said Cavusoglu.

Turkey declined to be a fully-fledged part of the anti-IS coalition unless Washington agrees to adopt an "integrated strategy" that also targets the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power.

However, Washington said the priority is not Assad but militant threat from the IS. Endit