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US President Donald Trump has said that he will lift sanctions on Syria, prior to an expected meeting with his leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Trump has agreed to “say hello” to the interim president of Syria on Wednesday in Saudi Aarabia as part of his tour through the middle, the White House said.
The announcement of the cancellation of sanctions was set in the Syrian capital of Damascus, where cheers, dancing and festive rifle fire were heard.
The sanctions had previously blocked any foreign financing, including help, to reach Syria and were originally intended to put pressure on the dictatorship of today President Bashar al-Assad.
Trump said that Syria policy change would “give a chance of quantity” and tell an investment forum in the Riyad of Saudi Arabia, “it’s their time to shine.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Syria, Asad Al-Shaibani, celebrated the decision as a “crucial turning point for the country” in an interview with the country’s news agency, Sana.
The country is looking forward to a future of “stability, self -supply and real reconstruction after years of a destructive war,” he added.
Ninety percent of the population of Syria remained under the poverty line at the end of the Assad regime and the new government arrived at an end of sanctions since Assad was overthrown in December.
Al-Sharaa told the BBC in an interview at the end of last year That Syria was not a threat to the world and called for sanctions.
He also called for Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that knocked down Assad, To be noted as a terrorist organization. It is referred to as a by the UN, the US, EU and VK, among many others, because it started as a splinter group of Al-Qaeda, which broke off in 2016.
Al-Sharaa repeated these calls at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron last week and said: “These sanctions were imposed on the previous regime for the crimes it committed, and this regime has disappeared.”
The Syrian leader has promised to protect ethnic minorities since his Sunni Islamic group led the rebel offensive that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was overthrowed in December after 13 years of destructive civil war.
The massive murders of hundreds of citizens from Assad’s Minority Alawite -sekt in the western coastal region in March, during collisions between the new security forces and Assad -Loyalists, have paved the fears among minority communities.
There have also been fatal collisions between Islamist armed factions, security forces and hunters from the Druze religious minority.
The US announcement is an important boost for Al-Sharaa, and also marks an important shift in foreign policy for the US, which previously said that it would not increase sanctions against Syria until issues such as the rights of minorities in the country progressed.
Trump said his announcement followed a request from Saudi -Aarabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
“Oh, what I do for the crown prince,” said the American leader and added, “I like him too much.”
The couple met on Tuesday on Trump’s first stop of his tour through the Midden -Oost, where they jointly announced a weapon agreement of $ 142 billion (£ 107 billion).
Former American ambassador in Syria Robert Ford, who served under former President Barack Obama, welcomed the Trump government to cancel sanctions.
“I visited Syria three months ago and the country was just destroyed after the 13-year civil war. It has to rebuild, it needs reconstruction, it needs foreign financing to do that,” he told the BBC.
“So the removal of sanctions, which will enable international capital flows to go to Syria from Gulf States, from other Arab states and from various aid organizations is absolutely vital.”
The tour through the Arab Gulf States will also see Trump visits Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
