The new U.S. envoy to Syria made his first visit to to the country on Thursday, a sign of warming relations as he called for the country’s new leadership to work toward a nonaggression pact with Israel.
The special envoy, Thomas Barrack, was appointed by President Trump just last week, days after Mr. Trump said that he would lift U.S. sanctions on Syria. Mr. Trump’s surprise announcement came ahead of a meeting in Saudi Arabia with Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, whom he pledged to help establish a stable government after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship last year.
Mr. Barrack’s prompt trip to Damascus signaled an attempt to build further momentum toward improving relations between the United States and Syria’s new government. While in the Syrian capital, Mr. Barrack raised the American flag over the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Damascus for the first time in over a decade. He later met with Mr. al-Shara and other Syrian officials, including the interior and defense ministers.
In remarks after those meetings, Mr. Barrack echoed another recent refrain of Mr. Trump — urging Syria to normalize relations with Israel, which have long been hostile and which the U.S. envoy on Thursday called a “solvable problem.”
“It starts with a dialogue,” Mr. Barrack told reporters in Damascus, according to Reuters. “I’d say we need to start with just a nonaggression agreement, talk about boundaries and borders.”
But it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Barrack had himself raised the topic in his meetings with Syrian officials on Thursday during what was the first official U.S. visit in years.
American relations with Syria have been on ice since 2011, when Mr. al-Assad’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests and the armed uprising that followed set off a civil war that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and forced a mass exodus of Syrians. The violence prompted the United States to shutter its embassy in 2012, and to impose further sanctions on Mr. al-Assad’s regime.
U.S. envoys for Syria operated from abroad and did not visit Damascus for more than a decade, as the civil war raged. But then in December, a coalition of rebels led by Mr. al-Shara ousted Mr. al-Assad, and many Syrians began to demand relief from crippling international sanctions.
The Trump administration initially took a wary stance toward Syria’s new leader, in large part because of his previous ties to an offshoot of Al Qaeda, for which the United States had put Mr. al-Shara on a blacklist.
Mr. al-Shara has taken pains to distance himself from that past, and has urged Western nations to lift the punishing sanctions to help stabilize a country where more than 90 percent of the population lives under the poverty line, according to U.N. estimates.
In announcing that the United States would lift sanctions, Mr. Trump said he wanted to give Syria “a chance at greatness.”
On Thursday, Mr. Barrack echoed that position from Damascus, where billboards in the city center thanked the U.S. president for the opportunity to “Make Syria Great Again.”
“America’s intent and the president’s vision is that we have to give this young government a chance by not interfering, not demanding, by not giving conditions, by not imposing our culture on your culture,” Mr. Barrack said, according to Reuters.
While it was not yet clear how much relief Syrians have felt since the lifting of U.S. sanctions, the Trump administration’s new stance does appear to be helping to clear the way for new investments and funds for postwar reconstruction.
Syria’s energy ministry on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Qatari-based UCC Holding for a $7 billion investment to help produce 5,000 megawatts of electricity for the country, which has seen its infrastructure battered by war — an announcement made on the day of Mr. Barrack’s visit.
He claimed partial credit on America’s behalf for the deal shortly later, posting on social media, “Only a week after President Trump’s announcement to lift sanctions, we have already unlocked billions of dollars of international investment for Syria.”
Mr. Barrack also said that the Trump administration would remove Washington’s yearslong designation of Syria a state sponsor of terrorism.
“Thank God, the issue of state sponsor of terrorism is gone with the Assad regime being finished,” he said.
Reham Mourshed contributed reporting.
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