US President Donald Trump met in Riyadh on Wednesday with Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the first such encounter between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years.
The meeting was attended by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister, and other senior Saudi and US officials. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took part via video conference.
Trump credited on Tuesday Crown Prince Mohammed and Erdogan with persuading to go ahead with the meeting.
The meeting, on the sidelines of Trump sitting with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, marks a major turn of events for a Syria still adjusting to life after the over 50-year, iron-gripped rule of the Assad family.
People across Syria cheered in the streets and shot off fireworks Tuesday night to celebrate, hopeful their nation locked out of credit cards and global finance might rejoin the world's economy when they need investment the most.
Trump on Tuesday announced the meeting, saying the US also would move to lift economic sanctions on Syria as well. Syria even before its ruinous civil war that began in 2011 struggled under a tightly controlled socialist economy and under sanctions by the US as being a state-sponsor of terror since 1979.
Trump said he was looking to give Syria, which is emerging from more than a decade of brutal civil war “a chance at peace” under Sharaa.
Sharaa was named interim president of Syria in January, a month after a stunning offensive by opposition groups led by his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, that stormed Damascus, ending the 54-year rule of the Assad family.
The United States has been weighing how to handle Sharaa since he took power in December.
Many Gulf Arab leaders have rallied behind the new government in Damascus and want Trump to follow, believing it is a bulwark against Iran’s return to influence in Syria, where it had helped prop up Assad’s government during a decadelong civil war.
The White House earlier signaled that the Trump and Sharaa engagement, on the sidelines of the GCC meeting in Riyadh convened as part of Trump’s four-day visit to the region, would be brief, with the administration saying the US president had “agreed to say hello” to the Syrian president on Wednesday.
Sharaa is the first Syrian leader to meet an American president since Hafez al-Assad met Bill Clinton in Geneva in 2000.
Syrians cheered the announcement by Trump that the US will move to lift sanctions on the beleaguered nation.
The state-run SANA news agency published video and photographs of Syrians cheering in Umayyad Square, the largest in the country’s capital, Damascus. Others honked their car horns or waved the new Syrian flag in celebration.
People whistled and cheered the news as fireworks lit the night sky.
A statement from Syria’s Foreign Ministry issued Tuesday night called the announcement “a pivotal turning point for the Syrian people as we seek to emerge from a long and painful chapter of war.”
The statement said the sanctions were “in response to the war crimes committed by the Assad regime against the Syrian people.”
“The removal of these sanctions offers a vital opportunity for Syria to pursue stability, self-sufficiency and meaningful national reconstruction, led by and for the Syrian people,” the statement added.
