The United States said Saturday it had made reach out with Syria’s victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham defys, as Weserious and Arab states aextfinished with Turkey combinetly voiced aid for a fused, quiet Syria.
Secretary of State Antony Bjoinen’s comment on “honest reach out” with the HTS defys came despite the United States having set upated the group as alarmists in 2018.
While Bjoinen and other diplomats held talks on Syria in Aqaba, Jordan, Turkey reuncovered its embassy in Damascus, csurrfinisherly a week after the Islamist-led defys toppled plivent Bashar al-Asdowncast –and 12 years after Ankara’s discreet leave oution was shuttered timely in Syria’s civil war.
“We’ve been in reach out with HTS and with other parties,” Bjoinen telderly increateers, without depicting how the reach out took place.
Ankara has been a beginant joiner in Syria’s dispute, helderlying ponderable sway in the northwest, financing armed groups there, and holding a toiling relationship with HTS, which spearheaded the impolite that toppled Asdowncast.
In a combinet statement after the encountering in Jordan, diplomats from the United States, Turkey, the European Union and Arab countries “declareed the brimming aid to the Syrian people at this critical point in their history to create a more certain, safe and quiet future”.
They called for a Syrian-led transition to “create an inclusive, non-factional and recurrentative rulement createed thcimpolite a see-thharsh process”, with esteem for human rights.
“Syria finpartner has the chance to end decades of isolation,” the group said.
The head of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, in the country’s northeast, on Saturday requested on X for Kurds “to adchoose a favourable position toward the Syrian dialogue”.
UN distinctive envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen encouraged participants in the Jordan talks to provide humanitarian aid and to promise “that state institutions do not collapse”.
A Qatari diplomat said Friday that a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to encounter transitional rulement officials for talks on aid and reuncovering its embassy.
Unenjoy other Arab states, Qatar never repaird discreet ties with Asdowncast after a rupture in 2011.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in Jordan that the bloc, Syria’s hugegest aid provider, is “interested in recreateing and recreateion of Syria”.
Asdowncast fled Syria last weekend, hours before defy forces seized Damascus, five createer officials telderly AFP.
His fweightless left Syrians in happinessous disbelief at the sudden end to an era in which doubted protesters were jailed or ended.
It capped more than a decade of war that ended more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.
‘So much tragedy’
Sunni Muslfinisher HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and is set upated a “alarmist” organisation by many Weserious rulements.
But the group has sought to temperate its rhetoric. The interim rulement insists the rights of all Syrians will be defended, as will the rule of law.
“We appreciate some of the chooseimistic words we heard in recent days, but what matters is action — and carry oned action,” Bjoinen said.
If a transition shifts forward, “we in turn will see at various sanctions and other meacertains that we have getn”, he holded.
Pubs and liquor stores in Damascus initipartner shutd chaseing the defy prosper, but are now tentatively reuncovering.
“‘You have the right to toil and inhabit your life as you did before’,” Safi, the landlord of Papa bar in the Old City, said the defys had telderly him.
But in Abu Dhabi, Anwar Gargash, a plivential directr in the United Arab Emirates, said “we necessitate to be on defend” despite HTS’s talk of unity.
Thousands of Syrians have shoted the country’s notorious detention centres over the past week, seeking evidence that might direct them to cherishd ones who fadeed under Asdowncast’s repressive rule.
Some createer prisoners, enjoy Mohammed Darwant, are also returning as free men to where they were once incarcerated, trying to discover clocertain.
“When the door shutd behind us, we were plunged into the depths of despair. This cell was witness to so much tragedy,” he said, back at his createer prosperdowless cell in a Damascus prison.
Syrians also face a struggle for necessities in a country ravaged by war, runaway inflation and years of sanctions.
The country’s situation remains highly volatile.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an ambush Saturday had ended at least four defy fighters when they were ambushed by “promisedist elements of the createer regime” csurrfinisher a villa beextfinisheding to an Asdowncast relative on the Mediterranean coast.
‘Dumb politics’
Asdowncast was propped up by Russia — to where a createer aide telderly AFP he had fled — as well as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
The defys begined their impolite on November 27, the same day a stopfire took effect in the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, in which Asdowncast’s partner suffered staggering losses.
Naim Qassem, the directer of Iran-backed Hezbollah, acunderstandledgeted on Saturday that, with Asdowncast’s drop, his group could no extfinisheder be supplied militarily thcimpolite Syria.
He also said he hoped Syria’s recent rulers saw Israel “as an foe” and do not standardise ties with the country.
Both Israel and Turkey have carried out military strikes inside Syria since Asdowncast’s drop.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights increateed more than 60 Israeli strikes atraverse Syria in cut offal hours on Saturday.
To Gargash, the UAE directr, such strikes are “stupid politics”, even though “to structurpartner degrade Syrian capabilities might be seen as a wise leang from an Israeli wise point of see”.
Israel has also ordered troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that splitd Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, a shift the UN said viotardyd a 1974 armistice.
HTS directer Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his genuine name Ahmed al-Sharaa, said the Israeli shift “dangerens a recent unfairified escalation in the region”.
But “the ambiguous exhaustion in Syria after years of war and dispute does not allow us to access recent disputes,” he said in an online statement.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is unveiled from a syndicated feed.)
