Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist.
Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today.
It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts.
Photo: EPA
The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May.
US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier this month said that Sharaa would “hopefully” sign an agreement to join the international US-led alliance against the Islamic State (IS) group.
The US plans to establish a military base near Damascus “to coordinate humanitarian aid and observe developments between Syria and Israel,” a diplomatic source in Syria told AFP.
The US Department of State’s decision on Friday to remove Sharaa from the blacklist was widely expected.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Sharaa’s government had been meeting US demands including on working to find missing Americans and on eliminating any remaining chemical weapons.
“These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime,” Pigott said, adding that the US delisting would promote “regional security and stability as well as an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process.”
The Syrian Ministry of the Interior on Saturday announced that it had carried out 61 raids and made 71 arrests in a “proactive campaign to neutralize the threat” of IS, according to the official SANA news agency.
It said the raids targeted locations where IS sleeper cells remain, including Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Damascus.
After his arrival in the US, Sharaa shared a video on social media of him playing basketball with US Central Command Deputy Commander Vice Admiral Brad Cooper and Kevin Lambert, the head of the international anti-IS operation in Iraq, alongside the caption “work hard, play harder.”
Sharaa’s Washington trip comes after his landmark visit to the UN in September — his first time on US soil — where the ex-jihadist became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN General Assembly in New York.
On Thursday, Washington led a vote by the UN Security Council to remove UN sanctions against him.
Formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda, Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was delisted as a terrorist group by Washington as recently as July.
Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their violent past and present a moderate image more tolerable to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.
Sharaa is expected to seek funds for Syria, which faces significant challenges in rebuilding after 13 years of brutal civil war.
Last month, the World Bank put a “conservative best estimate” of the cost of rebuilding Syria at US$216 billion.
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