Keystone-SDA
American diplomats have arrived in Syria to meet with the new Syrian authorities, dominated by radical Islamists, the State Department said. Their aim is to push them to promote unity after thirteen years of civil war.
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December 20, 2024 – 06:57
(Keystone-ATS) This is the first formal diplomatic mission dispatched to Damascus since the start of the bloody civil war which broke out in 2011 and experienced a spectacular rebound with the fall on December 8 of Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia.
The American envoys will meet representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an organization classified as terrorist by Washington, and civil society to discuss “their vision of the future of their country and the way in which States “The United States can support them,” said a State Department spokesperson.
The delegation includes Barbara Leaf, the head of the Middle East within the American diplomacy and Daniel Rubinstein, a diplomat specializing in the Arab world who is now responsible for contacts with Syria, said the same source.
Also present: Roger Carstens, responsible for collecting clues on Americans missing in Syria such as journalist Austin Tice, kidnapped in August 2012.
The United States thus takes over from France, whose flag now flies over the embassy closed in 2012, Germany, the United Kingdom and the UN which sent emissaries to establish contacts with the authorities transition, whose first steps in power are observed with caution.
World
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