Sudan’s Bashir first Arab leader to visit Syria since war began

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has become the first Arab League leader to visit Damascus since the war in Syria began nearly eight years ago. Syria’s state-run news agency SANA said al-Bashir was greeted on Sunday at the capital’s airport by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before they both headed to the presidential palace.
The two leaders discussed bilateral ties and the “situations and crises faced by many Arab countries”, the Syrian presidency said.
Photographs released by SANA showed them shaking hands at the airport in front of a Russian jet that appears to have brought the Sudanese president to Syria. Russia, a key ally of Assad, maintains an airbase southeast of the Syrian city of Latakia. SANA quoted al-Bashir as saying during the meeting that he hopes Syria will recover its important role in the region as soon as possible. He also affirmed Sudan’s readiness to provide all that it can to support Syria’s territorial integrity. For his part, Assad thanked al-Bashir for his visit, asserting that it will give strong momentum for restoring relations between the two countries “to the way it was before the war on Syria”, SANA said.
The reason for al-Bashir’s visit was not immediately clear.
Source: aljazeera.com