Antony Blinken stated the US had made “direct contact” with Syria’s victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels as western and Arab states together with Turkey collectively voiced help for a united, peaceable Syria.
The US secretary of state’s remark is regardless of Washington having designated the HTS rebels as terrorists in 2018.
Blinken and different diplomats held talks on Syria in Aqaba, Jordan, on Saturday. “We’ve been involved with HTS and with different events,” Blinken stated, with out specifying how the contact happened.
Turkey introduced it had reopened its embassy in Damascus, practically every week after the Islamist-led rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and 12 years after the Turkish diplomatic mission was closed early in Syria’s civil warfare.
Turkey has been a serious participant in Syria’s battle, holding appreciable sway within the north-west, financing armed teams there and sustaining a working relationship with HTS, which spearheaded the offensive that toppled Assad.
In a joint assertion after the assembly in Jordan, diplomats from the US, Turkey, the EU and Arab international locations “affirmed the complete help to the Syrian individuals at this important level of their historical past to construct a extra hopeful, safe and peaceable future”.
They known as for a Syrian-led transition to “produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and consultant authorities fashioned by means of a clear course of”, with respect for human rights.
“Syria lastly has the prospect to finish a long time of isolation,” the group stated.
The pinnacle of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, within the nation’s north-east, on Saturday appealed for Kurds “to undertake a beneficial place towards the Syrian dialogue”.
The UN particular envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, urged members within the Jordan talks to supply humanitarian assist and to make sure “that state establishments don’t collapse”.
A Qatari diplomat stated on Friday {that a} delegation from the Gulf emirate would go to Syria on Sunday to satisfy transitional authorities officers for talks on assist and reopening its embassy.
Not like different Arab states, Qatar by no means restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.
The EU international coverage chief, Kaja Kallas, stated in Jordan that the bloc, Syria’s largest assist supplier, was “eager about rebuilding and reconstruction of Syria”.
Assad’s flight from Syria final weekend left Syrians in joyous disbelief on the sudden finish to an period wherein suspected dissidents had been jailed or killed. It capped greater than a decade of warfare that killed greater than 500,000 individuals and displaced thousands and thousands.
Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s department of al-Qaida and is designated a terrorist organisation by many western governments, however has sought to average its rhetoric.
“We recognize a number of the constructive phrases we heard in latest days, however what issues is motion – and sustained motion,” Blinken stated. If a transition moved ahead, “we in flip will have a look at numerous sanctions and different measures that we now have taken”.
Pubs and liquor shops in Damascus initially closed after the insurgent victory however have been tentatively reopening.
“You’ve the suitable to work and dwell your life as you probably did earlier than,” Safi, the owner of Papa bar within the Outdated Metropolis, stated the rebels had instructed him.
However in Abu Dhabi, Anwar Gargash, a presidential adviser within the UAE, stated “we should be on guard” regardless of HTS’s speak of unity.
The nation’s scenario stays extremely unstable. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated an ambush by “loyalist parts of the previous regime” killed no less than 4 insurgent fighters close to a villa belonging to an Assad relative on the Mediterranean coast.
With Agence France-Presse
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