Washington — Hosted by President Donald Trump Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa At the White House on Monday, she welcomed the once-pariah nation into a US-led global coalition to fight ISIS.
It is the first visit by a Syrian head of state to the White House since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946, and comes after the United States lifted sanctions imposed on Syria during the decades it was ruled by the Assad family. Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces in doing so He overthrew former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Last December he won the title The country’s interim leader in January.
Trump and Shara – from He had ties to Al-Qaeda in the past There was an American bounty of $10 million on his head. They met for the first time in May In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. at that time, He described the American President Shara as “an attractive young man. A strong man. A strong past, a very strong past. A fighter.” This was the first official meeting between the United States and Syria since 2000, when former President Bill Clinton met with Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father.
White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said Monday’s visit is “part of the president’s diplomatic efforts to meet with anyone around the world seeking peace.”
Trump recently said that Shara is “doing a very good job so far” and that “a lot of progress has been made with Syria” since the United States eased sanctions.
One official familiar with the administration’s plans said Syria’s entry into the global coalition fighting ISIS would allow it to work more closely with U.S. forces, even though the new Syrian army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s northeast were already fighting the group.
Before Shara arrived in the United States, the United Nations Security Council Vote to lift sanctions on the Syrian president and other government officials in a move that Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said was a strong sign that Syria is in a new era since the fall of Assad.
Sharia enters the meeting with its priorities. He wants the permanent repeal of sanctions that have punished Syria over widespread allegations of human rights violations by Assad’s government and security forces. While Trump has currently waived the Caesar Act sanctions, a permanent repeal would require Congress to act.
One option is a proposal from Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to end the sanctions without any conditions. The other was drafted by Senator Lindsey Graham, a hard-line Trump ally who wants to set conditions for repealing sanctions that will be reviewed every six months.
But advocates say any unconditional cancellation would prevent companies from investing in Syria because they fear they could be subject to sanctions. Moaz Mustafa, Executive Director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, likened it to “a hanging shadow that paralyzes any initiatives for our country.”
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Associated Press writer Konstantin Torobin contributed to this report.