MANAMA: Syria’s president will discuss issues including lifting remaining sanctions, reconstruction and counter-terrorism when he becomes the country’s first leader to pay an official visit to Washington later this month, the foreign minister said Sunday.
Ahmed Al-Sharaa is expected in the US capital in early November, Syria’s top diplomat Asaad Al-Shaibani told a panel at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain.
“This visit is certainly historic,” he said.
“Many topics will be discussed, starting with the lifting of sanctions,” Shaibani said, adding: “Today we are fighting (the Islamic State) ... any effort in this regard requires international support.”
Discussions will also revolve around reconstruction after more than a decade of war, he said.
The foreign ministry in Damascus confirmed the trip would be the first ever visit to the White House by a Syrian president.
On Saturday, US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said Sharaa was heading to Washington “hopefully” to sign an agreement to join the international US-led alliance against the Daesh.
Though it will be Sharaa’s first visit to Washington, it will be his second to the US after a landmark UN trip in September, where the former jihadist became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN General Assembly in New York.
In May, the interim leader, whose Islamist forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar Assad late last year, met US President Donald Trump for the first time in Riyadh during a historic visit that led to the US leader vowing to lift economic sanctions on Syria.
Israel talks
Syria and Israel remain technically at war, but they opened direct negotiations after Assad was toppled by an Islamist-led coalition last December.
Trump has expressed hope that Syria will join other Arab countries that have normalized ties with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords.
But Shaibani said that “regarding Syria and the Abraham Accords, this is an issue that is not being considered and has not been discussed.”
A Syrian official had said earlier this year that Syria expects to finalize security and military agreements with Israel in 2025, in what would be a breakthrough less than a year after Assad’s ouster.
Since December, Israel has deployed troops in a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separates the countries’ forces and has launched hundreds of strikes in Syria. Damascus has not retaliated.
“We do not want Syria to enter a new war, and Syria is not currently in a position to threaten any party, including Israel,” said Shaibani.
He said the negotiations underway were focused on “reaching a security agreement that does not undermine the 1974 agreement (cementing a ceasefire with Israel) and does not legitimize any new reality that Israel might impose in the south.”
