Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and one of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) most powerful leaders spoke on the telephone on Friday, signalling a major thaw in Damascus’ troubled relations with Arab countries, which had mostly boycotted al-Assad and backed his opposition.
The Emirati news agency said that al-Assad and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan discussed efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak and reviewed preventive measures to fight it.
Sheikh Mohammad, believed to be the Emirates’ day-to-day ruler, said that Syria and the UAE need to “place the humanitarian solidarity over political issues during this common challenge we are all facing,” the Emirati reported.
Photo: AFP / HO / SANA
The crown prince of the oil-rich Abu Dhabi affirmed that Syria “will not be left alone during these delicate and critical circumstances.”
Syria’s health system and infrastructure have been affected by years of conflict. Although Damascus has recorded only five cases of COVID-19 infection, there are concerns that the virus might prove a major test for the government.
The UAE had been a supporter of the Syrian opposition during the early years of the war, now in its 10th year, but as the war wound down and with the Syrian army capturing most of the territory that was once lost to the opposition, the UAE and a few Arab countries made limited and usually indirect openings toward al-Assad’s government.
In late 2018, the UAE reopened its embassy in Damascus, for the first time since an organized Arab diplomatic boycott soon after the Syrian war erupted in 2011. The embassy representation is at a charge d’affairs level, but its very reopening was a sign that more rapprochement is likely to follow.
Friday’s phone call was the first publicized contact between an Arab leader and al-Assad.
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