Top Western, Arab officials gathered in Saudi Arabia to discuss Syria | Syrian war news
Top Western and Middle Eastern diplomats and ministers met to discuss easing sanctions on Syria after the ouster of al-Assad.
Foreign ministers and top diplomats from Western countries and the Middle East gathered in the Saudi capital to discuss the future of Syria, the first such regional meeting since the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad last month.
The new Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, who is repeatedly called for the abolition of decades-old sanctionshe arrived in Riyadh on Saturday night, according to Saudi state news agency SPA.
The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey will articulate the regional position at the meeting.
Also participating will be United States Undersecretary John Bass, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
The conference was held at a time when the new Syrian administration, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), called lifting of sanctions by the West to aid international funding in Damascus.
Analyst Rob Geist Pinfold says the Biden administration and European countries are “moving in the direction that HTS wants them to go in terms of removing sanctions or at least freezing them.”
“The US has said it will freeze sanctions on things like paying public sector workers for energy supplies, for example, and that is critical,” Pinfold, a lecturer at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.
“Many of these sanctions were secondary sanctions – meaning that not only will US citizens or companies be sanctioned for doing business with Syria, but other countries or third parties as well.”
Relief for sanctions
On Monday, the US issued a exemption from sanctions for transactions with the ruling institutions in Syria six months after the end of al-Assad’s rule to try to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid.
In recent days, Germany, Italy and France advocated for the easing of European Union sanctions on Syria, but the final decision could only come from the entire bloc.
Possible priorities for relief include “those sanctions that hinder the construction of the country, access to banking services and all these things,” top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas told reporters in Riyadh on Sunday.
Germany’s Baerbock said on Sunday that sanctions against al-Assad’s allies, who “committed serious crimes” during the Syrian civil war, must remain in place.
A lightning-quick rebel offensive ousted al-Assad on December 8, and HTS, which led the advance, installed an interim government that named al-Shaibani as foreign minister.
The meeting is the first to be attended by the new Syrian rulers and top Western officials, and will be led by Saudi Arabia.
It follows a meeting of top diplomats from the US, UK, France, Germany and the EU on Syria in Rome on Thursday and a key meeting hosted by Jordan in December, where regional players signaled concern about Syria’s new rulers and what they need to do to get international recognition.
