US says in contact with new Syria rulers

DAMASCUS: The United States has made contact with Syria’s victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday, despite previously designating the group as terrorists.

Blinken’s comments, after talks on Syria in Jordan, came as Turkey reopened its embassy in Damascus, nearly a week after the rebels toppled president Bashar al-Assad, and 12 years after Ankara’s diplomatic mission was shuttered early in Syria’s civil war.

“We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken told reporters, without specifying how the “direct contact” took place.

Blinken spoke after he joined Middle Eastern, Turkish and Western diplomats in Jordan for talks on Syria, and a day after nationwide celebrations at Assad’s ouster.

Ankara has been a major player in Syria’s conflict, holding considerable sway in the northwest, financing armed groups there, and maintaining a working relationship with HTS which spearheaded the offensive that brought down Assad.

The Turkish flag was raised over the diplomatic mission in an embassy district of Damascus, in the presence of the new charge d’affaires Burhan Koroglu, an AFP journalist said.

Blinken, on a regional Syria-focused tour, said the talks in Aqaba, Jordan, agreed on the need for an “inclusive and representative” government in Damascus.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II similarly stressed, during the meeting, the need for “a free, secure, stable and unified Syria.”

UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen urged participants to provide humanitarian aid and to ensure “that state institutions do not collapse”.

“If we can achieve that, perhaps there is a new opportunity for the Syrian people,” he said.

A Qatari diplomat said on Friday that a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to meet transitional government officials for talks on aid and the reopening of its embassy.

Unlike other Arab states, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.

Assad has fled Syria, closing an era in which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed, and capping nearly 14 years of war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

A day before the meetings in Jordan, Syrians had celebrated what they called the “Friday of victory”, with fireworks heralding the Assad dynasty’s fall.

Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and is designated a “terrorist” organisation by many Western governments.

But the group has sought to moderate its rhetoric, and the interim government insists the rights of all Syrians will be protected, as will the rule of law.