DAMASCUS, Syria: Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa arrived in New York on Sunday to take part in the UN General Assembly, the first president of Syria to do so in nearly six decades.
The last time a Syrian head of state attended the General Assembly was in 1967. That was before the 50-year rule of the Assad family dynasty, which came to an end in December when then-President Bashar Assad was ousted in a lightning insurgent offensive led by Al-Sharaa. Assad’s fall also brought to an end nearly 14 years of civil war.
Since then, Al-Sharaa has sought to restore ties with Arab countries and the West, where officials were initially wary of his past ties with the Al-Qaeda militant group. The rebel group he formerly led, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, was previously designated by the United States as a terrorist group.
Since assuming power, Al-Sharaa has preached coexistence and sought to reassure Syria’s minority communities, but the country’s fragile recovery has been threatened by outbreaks of sectarian violence. Fighters affiliated with the new government were also accused of killing hundreds of civilians from the Druze and Alawite religious minorities.
Along with his appearance at the UN General Assembly, Al-Sharaa is likely to use his visit to push for further sanctions relief for Syria as it attempts to rebuild its war-battered economy and infrastructure.
US President Donald Trump met with Al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May and announced that he would lift decades of sanctions imposed on Syria under the Assads’ rule.
He followed through by ordering a large swathe of sanctions lifted or waived. However, the most stringent sanctions were imposed by Congress under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act passed in 2019 and will require a congressional vote to permanently remove them.
Another topic that will loom large during Al-Sharaa’s visit is his country’s relations with US ally Israel. Since Assad’s fall, Israel has been suspicious of Al-Sharaa’s government and has seized a formerly UN-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria and launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military sites.
Negotiations have been underway for a security deal that Al-Sharaa has said he hopes will bring about a withdrawal of Israeli forces and return to a 1974 disengagement agreement. While Al-Sharaa said last week that a deal could be reached in a matter of days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in remarks Sunday appeared to downplay the odds of a breakthrough.
“There is some progress” but the deal is “still a vision for the future,” he said.
Also on Sunday, Syrian elections officials announced that the country’s first parliamentary elections since the fall of Assad will take place on Oct. 5. The members of the People’s Assembly will not be chosen via a direct popular vote, however, but through an electoral college system with electoral bodies in each province voting for two-thirds of the seats, while Al-Sharaa will directly appoint one third.
Officials have said that holding direct elections at this stage would be too logistically challenging since many Syrians have lost personal documentation or are living as refugees abroad after the nearly 14-year civil war.