ANKARA: Turkey's foreign minister said yesterday he has told his Russian counterpart that the Damascus regime's attacks on the last rebel-held bastion in Syria must stop. Backed by Russian air power, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has been intensifying his assault on the holdout northwestern province of Idlib.

And tensions have been running high between Ankara and Moscow after 14 Turks were killed in shelling by Syrian government forces in the region. "I stressed that the attacks in Idlib must stop and it was necessary to establish a lasting ceasefire that would not be violated," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told journalists in Germany.

Cavusoglu met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday during the Munich Security Conference. Turkey has 12 observation posts in Idlib as part of a 2018 deal reached between Ankara and Moscow in the Russian resort of Sochi to prevent a regime offensive.

But despite the agreement, Syrian regime forces, backed by Russian air strikes, have pressed ahead with an assault to retake the province, killing hundreds of people. Four of the Turkish posts are believed to be encircled by Syrian forces, and Ankara has threatened to attack Damascus if they do not retreat by the end of February.

A Turkish delegation will head to Moscow today, after Russian officials visited Ankara last weekend but no concrete agreement emerged. Rebel supporter Turkey and Damascus ally Russia have worked closely on Syria in recent years despite being on opposing sides of the nine-year conflict.

Meanwhile, Cavusoglu said China should not label all Muslim ethnic Uighurs as terrorists, following talks with his Chinese counterpart in Germany. UN experts believe China is holding a million Muslims in camps in the western Xinjiang region where most of the country's ethnic Uighur, the largest Muslim minority, live.

The region has long suffered from violent unrest, which China claims is orchestrated by an organized "terrorist" movement seeking independence. "Whether Turk, Uighur Turk, Han Chinese, Buddhist or Christian… it is not right to call all Uighur Turks terrorists just because one or two terrorists came from a certain ethnic group," Cavusoglu told reporters.

Cavusoglu held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Saturday during the Munich Security Conference. The minister said he had brought up the Uighur issue with Wang. "Uighur Turks are Chinese citizens so our wish is that Uighur Turks exercise all their rights as first class citizens. These are our expectations," he said in televised comments.

The Turkish minister criticized skeptical statements from Beijing over links between Turks and Uighurs, insisting they had "ethnic, religious, cultural and historical ties". But Cavusoglu said Ankara did not want to use the issue as a "political tool" against Beijing like other countries, which he did not name.

The Turkish minister's comments were cautious, especially compared with the foreign ministry spokesman's remarks last February which described China's treatment of Uighurs as "a great embarrassment for humanity". Last year Beijing invited Turkey to send a delegation to Xinjiang, a meeting which Cavusoglu said could take place depending on the programme's details. "It is not possible to send a delegation only for official meetings," Cavusoglu added.

The majority of mainly Muslim countries have opted to steer clear of public statements on the issue, for fear of angering China which is an important trading partner. Footballer Mesut Ozil, an Arsenal midfielder and former German international of Turkish origin, encountered much fury from Beijing in December after he condemned China's crackdown. - AFP