The ministerial summit on Syria was held in Vienna on October 30. Apart from the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia, foreign ministers and representatives from the United States, Turkey, France, Germany, Egypt, Russia, Jordan, the UK, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iraq, Lebanon, China and Oman also attended the talks.
Envoys from the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) were also present at the talks.
โThere was much give-and-takeย [during the talks]; and the conversations between us and Saudi Arabia were tense, and voices were raised,โ said Abbas Araqchi, Iranโs deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, in an interview on Monday night.
โAt one pointโ said Araqchi, โthere was a quarrel betweenโฆ Zarif and Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister.โ
Referring to Zarifโs efforts to establish the Islamic Republicโs viewpoints in the final communiquรฉ of the summit, Araqchi said, โHad the preliminary draft been published, one would have seen how different it was from the final text, where our principled demands can be seen.โ
โThe foreign minister of one of the countries even declared angrily that โIt seems we are here to bring about the realization of Zarifโs demands,โ Araqchi said. โEveryone admitted that Mr. Zarifโs demands were being met.โ
โNothing will happen without Iranโ
In a joint statement at the end of the Vienna talks, the participants called for a nation-wide truce in Syria. They said โsubstantial differencesโ remained but stressed the need to โaccelerate all diplomatic effortsโ to end the conflict in Syria.
In the statement, the participants called on the United Nations (UN) to bring together the representatives of the Syrian government and opposition to launch โa political process leading to credible, inclusive, non-sectarian governance, followed by a new constitution and elections.โ
โThe reality on the ground is that if Iranโs demands โ which are rooted in the legitimate outlook of the Syrian people โ are not met, nothing will happenโ regarding the resolution of the Syrian crisis, Araqchi said.
Iranโs diplomatic scope and capabilities as well as the Islamic Republicโs confidence in that area following the conclusion of the agreement between the country and the P5+1 resulted in Iran being the main actor in the Syria talks, he added.
Araqchi made the remarks in an interview aired on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)โs Channel 2.
Previous talks on Syria, mediated by the UN and dubbed Geneva I and II, failed to find a solution to end the conflict in the Arab country. Iran had not been invited to any of the talks.
The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and left over one million injured, according to UN.
Saudi failure
Also on Monday, another Iranian deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who was present at the Vienna talks, said the Saudi foreign minister behavesย in an โunbalancedโ manner unworthy of a foreign minister.
Amir-Abdollahian told Alalam News Network on Monday that, during the one-day negotiations in the Austrian capital,ย Jubeir leveled unfounded accusations against Iran once he failed to reasonably argue over his own countryโs demands but saw that the logical stances of the Islamic Republic were being addressed.
The Iranian official said that Jubeir received โa strong, unambiguous responseโ from Zarif.