Thirteen years after the severance of diplomatic relations with the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, in response to its bloody repression of the popular uprising launched in 2011, France and Germany have expressed their desire to open a new chapter with Syria and its new leaders. On the heights of Mount Mazzeh, which overlooks Damascus, in the presidential palace where the Syrian dictator received his guests until his fall on December 8, 2024, the heads of French and German diplomacy, Jean-Noël Barrot and Annalena Baerbock , were received on Friday, January 3, by the de facto leader of Syria, Ahmed Al-Charaa.
Exchanges with the leader of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTC, former branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria, classified as terrorist by the European Union and the United States) were “very constructive”, underlined Mr. Barrot. The two ministers, who came as part of a mission under the mandate of the European Union (EU), are the first Western officials to meet the new master of Damascus, whose first steps are closely scrutinized. Paris and Berlin, which have always refused normalization with the Al-Assad regime, unlike other EU member countries, wanted to send a clear signal “only a new political departure” between Europe and Syria is possible, said Annalena Baerbock.
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