Mr Putin’s foreign affairs adviser said that the Kremlin had received Mr Erdogan’s request for a meeting, but would not say whether such a meeting is possible.
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Turkey says the Russian plane strayed into its airspace and ignored repeated warnings but Russia insisted it did not cross the border and accused Ankara of a “planned provocation”. The militants have also claimed the downing of a Russian airliner that broke up over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on October 31, killing all 224 people on board.
Lavrov thanked Damascus for rescuing one of the crew of the shot down plane, while Muallem described the incident as an unprecedented act of aggression and offered his country’s condolences to the families of the servicemen who died on Tuesday.
The two leaders, however, sharply differed over the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Russian Federation and Iran but faces calls for his resignation from the United States, the European Union, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which blame him for the country’s five-year civil war.
He said: “We don’t favour tensions”.
Germany said it will deploy Tornado reconnaissance jets to support France in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.
Erdogan said he hoped to meet Putin face-to-face on the sidelines of the climate summit in Paris next week.
“We believe that the Turkish leadership has crossed the line of what is acceptable”, Lavrov said at the start of talks with Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem in Moscow.
Moscow said Friday it would cancel its visa-free travel for Turkish tourists starting January 1 and has also threatened further economic retaliation. The pilot was machine-gunned dead by rebels on the ground in Syria as he parachuted down.
Turkey and Russian Federation have also sparred over ISIL, with each side accusing the other of being soft on “terrorism”. II would like to meet (Putin) face to face in Paris. Hollande agreed, calling the plane incident a “serious incident, obviously regrettable”, though adding that the matter should be used to “strengthen the coordination between the countries”, according to the AP.
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Russian Federation has vowed to carry out broad retaliatory measures against Turkey’s economy to avenge the downing of its warplane by Turkey earlier this week. Turkey is adamant its forces did not know the nationality of the plane before shooting at it.
