Kurds invited to join Syria peace congress in Sochi: Lavrov

MOSCOW: Russia said Monday it had invited Kurds to take part in an upcoming Syrian peace congress in Sochi, despite a Turkish offensive against Kurdish militia in northern Syria.

Together with regime backer Iran and rebel supporter Turkey, Russia -- a key backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- is preparing to host the January 30 talks with the aim of agreeing a new constitution for post-war Syria.

"Kurdish representatives have been included on the list of Syrians invited to participate in the Syrian National Dialogue Congress," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Moscow initially hoped to convene peace talks in Sochi last November but those efforts collapsed following a lack of agreement among co-sponsors.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the time to fumed at the prospect of inviting the Syrian Kurdish group the PYD and its armed wing, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Without referring to Kurdish militia by name, Erdogan said in November: "We cannot consider a terrorist gang with blood on their hands a legitimate actor."

Turkey considers the YPG to be a terror group and the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has waged a bloody three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.

The Turkish military on Saturday launched a cross-border operation aiming to oust the YPG from its enclave of Afrin in northern Syria.

But Lavrov on Monday said that Syrian Kurds should play a role in the "future political process."

"This role should certainly be ensured," he told reporters, but added that all of Syria's ethnic groups should respect the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov -- asked whether the Turkish offensive would complicate the Sochi congress -- declined to comment, but said that the preparations for the conference were under way.