Two weeks after seizing power in an all-out offensive, Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has strengthened regional cooperation and vowed at a meeting on Sunday to refrain from “passive” interference in neighboring Lebanon.
Mr. Sharaa is also an Ankara-backed leader in supporting the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which captured Damascus on December 8 and ousted its longtime ruler, according to a video published by Anadolu state news agency. After the rebels played a key role, it was also shown that they met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Bashar al-Assad.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry did not provide details about where in the Syrian capital the meeting took place.
Turkey maintains strong ties with Syria’s new leaders, with Turkish government intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin visiting Damascus just four days after Assad’s fall.
Regional power Saudi Arabia, which has long supported the anti-Assad regime during the Syrian civil war, is also in direct contact with the new Syrian authorities and will soon send a delegation to the country, Syria’s ambassador in Riyadh said.
In a meeting with visiting Lebanese Druze leader Walid and Taimur Jumblatt, Shaller said Syria would no longer engage in any “negative interference in Lebanon.”
He added that Damascus “respects Lebanon’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence of decisions and security stability.”
Shaller added that Syria “keeps an equal distance from all people” in Lebanon, acknowledging that Syria is a “source of fear and anxiety” for the country.
Walid Jumblatt, a longtime fierce critic of Assad and his father Hafez, who ruled Syria before him, arrived in Damascus on Sunday with a delegation of members of the parliamentary bloc and Druze religious figures. did.
The Druze religious minority is spread across Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.
He met with Shara’a, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, at the presidential palace, where the new Syrian leader wore a suit and tie instead of the olive green military shirt he had been wearing just days earlier.
Walid Jumblatt has accused the former Syrian authorities of assassinating his father in 1977 during Lebanon’s civil war.
Syrian forces invaded Lebanon in 1976 but withdrew in 2005 under enormous pressure after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, allegedly by Damascus and its ally Lebanese Iran-backed group Hezbollah.
President Assad is a follower of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and has billed himself as the protector of the country’s religious and ethnic minorities.
Banned as a terrorist organization by many governments, including the United States, HTS’s seizure of power by Sunni Muslims has raised concerns, but the group has recently sought to soften its rhetoric.
Despite concerns over Syria’s future, world powers including the United States and the European Union have stepped up contacts with the war-torn country’s new leaders, urging them to guarantee protections for women and minorities. .
Foreign leaders have also stressed the importance of combating “terrorism and extremism.”
Iran’s supreme leader, who was a key supporter of the Assad regime before its fall to the rebels, predicted on Sunday the “emergence of a strong and honorable group” to confront Syria’s “insecurity”.
Ayatollah Khamenei said Syria’s youth “will stand up with strength and determination against those who orchestrated this unrest and those who carried it out. God is pleased to overcome them.” Ta.
Assad has long played a strategic role in Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” a loose alliance of regional proxies, particularly in facilitating arms supplies to neighboring Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The axis suffered a major blow over the past year with Israel’s annihilation of the leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Still, Khamenei denied that these militants acted as proxies, adding: “If we want to take action one day, we don’t need proxy forces.”
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