Russia wants to know who barred diplomats from boarding Syrian plane in Turkey - Lavrov
MOSCOW. Oct 23 (Interfax) - Russia will demand that Turkey make it clear who banned consular access to Russian citizens on board a Syrian passenger aircraft heading from Moscow to Damascus that Turkish warplanes forced to land recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"We will be seeking clarity to understand who issued such orders and who barred our consulate workers from boarding the plane," Lavrov said at a meeting with the staff of Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the transcript of which the Russian Foreign Ministry circulated on Tuesday.
"This all is important, because it characterizes relations between our countries. We and Turkey are quite close neighbors, and we have good relations, which can even be called strategic in nature; there are mechanisms of top-level and high-level meetings, and we are developing contacts in various fields," he said.
"We would not like such occurrences to mar our bilateral ties," he said.
In particular, Lavrov said that, when Russian authorities learned that the plane had been forced to land and when Russian consulate workers obtained the list of passengers and realized that there are Russians on board, they immediately demanded access to them.
"No access was provided during the eight hours that the plane remained in Ankara. Our Turkish partners suggested that the plane was about to depart, but this didn't happen," he said.
"The people were kept for two hours in a sealed aircraft, whose engines were stopped and air conditioning was turned off. One of the passengers, the husband of a Russian citizen, felt unwell, and people had to look for medicine on board," he said.
"Then they opened the doors and said everyone would be escorted to the airport. But nobody invited anyone anywhere. Then our citizens saw in the windows that there was a bus on the airfield with no driver. So they never went anywhere, but food was brought on the plane, which, however, was not even enough to feed the children," he said.
Russian authorities learned about this all only when the plane landed in Damascus, he said.
"Then we found the Russians who were on board and asked them what exactly happened in reality. Their account differed from that of our Turkish partners," he said.