CBS News: Trump plans to meet the Syrian transitional president on the sidelines of the US General Assembly
CBS News revealed that President Donald Trump intends to hold an official meeting with Syrian transitional president, Ahmed al Sharaa, on the sidelines of the upcoming UN General Assembly.
This anticipated meeting is a significant diplomatic move, especially since Sharaa remains on the UN sanctions list for terrorism, according to CBS News.
According to the report, Sharaa will be the first Syrian official to address the General Assembly in more than six decades, reflecting a shift in the Syrian and international political landscape.
This meeting follows a previous meeting between Trump and Sharaa last May in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, during the Gulf-US summit.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended via videoconference, along with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Syrian counterpart, Asaad al Shaibani.
During that meeting, Trump stated that Washington was considering normalizing relations with Damascus, stressing that the decision to lift sanctions on Syria aimed to give it a new opportunity to engage with the international community.
For her part, White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt explained that the US president emphasized the important role Sharaa could play in the next phase, calling on him to assume responsibility for managing ISIS detention centers in northeastern Syria.
Its noteworthy that the last official meeting between a US president and his Syrian counterpart was in 2000, when former President Bill Clinton met with the late President Hafez al Assad in Geneva, Switzerland.
