Reports indicate Russian foreign minister cancels visit to Turkey

Unconfirmed reports on Tuesday said Russia´s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov had cancelled a planned trip to Turkey.

The reports, one of them attributed to the BBC, followed the shooting down of a Russian SU-24 warplane earlier in the day by the Turkish military and came amid a flurry of intense diplomatic activity to reach a ceasfire in Syria and agree on a framework for a political transition.

On Tuesday morning, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian president Vladimir Putin, referred a journalist´s query about Lavrov´s travel plans to the country´s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Interfax said.

The Kremlin had issued a statement earlier saying it was premature to forecast a worsening of Russian-Turkish relations until the situation of the crashed Russian airplane had been fully clarified.

Putin was scheduled to hold talks with the King of Jordan and "one may presume that Putin will touch" on the subject of the SU 24 which had been shot down, Interfax added.

On 23 November US Secretary of State John Kerry met with the United Arab Emirates´s foreign minister, Bin Zayed al Nahyan.

After their meeting Secretary Kerry said the US and the UAE "are deeply committed to trying to achieve a ceasefire and a political process. We want the violence to stop, and there again we want a secular Syria in which the people of Syria choose their future."

In parallel, Russian president Vladimir Putin met in Tehran with the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Both leaders said they would jointly oppose "external attempts" at regime change in Syria, AFP reported.

Various Arab countries and Turkey had been pressing until recently for the removal of Syria´s leader Bashar al-Assad, although it remained to be seen if he would be allowed to participate in a transition process.

French Prime Minister Francois Hollande was due to fly to the US on Wednesday to meet Barack Obama, with a visit to Moscow scheduled for 24 November.