ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Top regional officials will meet in Saudi Arabia later this week to discuss Syria’s return to the Arab fold, Qatar’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, as the over a decade-long isolation of Damascus starts to ease.
Qatar’s Foreign Minister Majed Al Ansari revealed that a meeting would be held in the Red Sea city of Jeddah between the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt on Friday.
The main objective of the upcoming meeting “is to discuss the situation in Syria,” Ansari said in a briefing to local media, as cited by AFP.
Syria was expelled from the Arab League when civil war broke out in the country in 2011 as Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, supported the rebels against President Bashar al-Assad. The government in Damascus then began receiving support from Saudi’s regional rival, Iran.
The Arab League is expected to hold a summit in Riyadh in May with Syria’s return likely on the agenda. There is no confirmation of whether Assad will attend but his presence would mark the most significant step towards his normalization within the region.
A devastating earthquake on February 6 which tore through parts of Turkey and Syria prompted nations across the Arab world to extend a helping hand to the already war-torn country.
Following the tragedy, Saudi Arabia said a consensus was emerging among Arab states that an end to Syria’s isolation and return to dialogue is needed in order to address the pending humanitarian issues.
The GCC consists of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Oman has been one of the few countries that maintained normal ties without severing diplomatic ties with Syria over the past decade. Assad has also visited the UAE twice last month, indicating closer ties between Damascus and Gulf.
Qatar has previously stated that it does not intend to normalize ties with Assad and has discouraged other countries from doing so. Ansari stated that Doha’s position had not changes but that it was responding to the general Arab consensus emerging.
The international community has accused Assad of committing war crimes in rebel-held areas and for brutal repression of opposition in regime-controlled parts of the country. Largely assisted by Russian air attacks, Assad restored control over most of the country after 12 years of war killed half a million people and displaced almost half of the Syrian population.
The US remains firm in its stance that it will not engage with the Assad regime without any accountability for war-time abuses.
