Syrian presidency says al-Sharaa and Trump discussed ways to ‘strengthen and develop’ ties between the US and Syria.
United States President Donald Trump has held talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, as the Department of the Treasury announced suspending sanctions against Damascus for a further six months.
The meeting on Monday capped a stunning year for al-Sharaa, a 43-year-old former al-Qaeda commander who toppled the longtime hardline leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, last December. Al-Sharaa, who wants to unify his war-ravaged nation and end its decades of international isolation, was the first ever Syrian leader to visit the White House since the country’s independence in 1946. The Syrian presidency said al-Sharaa and Trump held talks “focusing on bilateral relations between Syria and the United States, ways to strengthen and develop them, and a number of regional and international issues of common interest”.
For his part, Trump heaped praise on al-Sharaa after the meeting. “He comes from a very tough place, and he’s a tough guy. I like him,” Trump said of the Syrian president.
“We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful, because that’s part of the Middle East. We have peace now in the Middle East – the first time that anyone can remember that ever happening.”
But Trump also gave a nod to al-Sharaa’s controversial past.
“We’ve all had rough pasts,” he said.
Al-Sharaa later told Fox News that his association with al-Qaeda was a matter of the past and was not discussed during his meeting with Trump. Syria is now seen as a geopolitical ally of Washington and not a threat, he added.
Source: aljazeera.com/news
