DAMASCUS: The United Nations told the leader of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group which toppled Bashar Assad that Syria must have a “credible and inclusive” transition.
The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen who arrived in Damascus on Sunday, has met Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — who now goes under his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa — Pedersen’s office said Monday in a statement on Telegram.
He also met interim prime minister Mohammed Al-Bashir, it said.
Pedersen met them after Saturday’s international meeting on Syria in Jordan, and stressed “the need for a credible and inclusive Syrian-owned and led political transition based on the principles of United Nations Security Council resolution 2254 (2015).”
The UN envoy also underlined “the intention of the United Nations to render all assistance to the Syrian people,” and was briefed on their “challenges and priorities,” the statement added.
It said Pedersen had several engagements planned in the days ahead, but did not elaborate.
Assad was toppled by a lightning 11-day offensive that swept down from northwest Syria, with fighters entering the capital on December 8.
Abandoned by his Russian and Iranian backers, Assad fled into exile in Moscow, bring to an end five decades of abuses by his clan.
The HTS group that led his overthrow is a former branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria, and the United States and other Western governments still classify it as a “terrorist” group.
While hailing Assad’s downfall, several nations have said they will wait to see how Syria’s new Sunni Muslim authorities treat minorities in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country.
Several countries including the United States and Britain have said they have already made contact with Golani.
UN to HTS leader: Syria must have a ‘credible’ transition
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UN to HTS leader: Syria must have a ‘credible’ transition
- Special envoy underlined ‘the intention of the United Nations to render all assistance to the Syrian people’
High-level Turkish team to visit Damascus on Monday for talks on SDF integration
- The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal
ANKARA: A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkiye views the US-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organization and has warned of military action if the group does not honor the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkiye’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkiye has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganizing the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkiye sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkiye and the unity of Syria.
