AMMAN: Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi was due in Damascus on Monday to meet with Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, Amman said, the latest high-profile visit since Bashar al-Assad’s ouster.
Jordan, which borders Syria to the south, hosted a summit earlier this month where top Arab, Turkish, EU and US diplomats called for an inclusive and peaceful transition after years of civil war.
Sharaa, whose Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) spearheaded the offensive that toppled Assad on December 8, has welcomed senior officials from a host of countries in the Middle East and beyond in recent days.
The Jordanian foreign ministry said in a statement that Safadi would meet with the new Syrian leader on Monday as well as with “several Syrian officials”.
This is the first visit by a senior Jordanian official since Assad’s fall.
Government spokesman Mohamed Momani told reporters on Sunday that Jordan “sides with the will of the brotherly Syrian people”, stressing the close ties between the two nations.
Momani said the kingdom would like to see security and stability restored in Syria, and supported “the unity of its territories”.
Stability in war-torn Syria was in Jordan’s interests, Momani said, and would “ensure security on its borders”.
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Some Syrians who had fled the war since 2011 and sought refuge in Jordan have begun returning home, according to Jordanian authorities.
The interior ministry said Thursday that more than 7,000 Syrians had left, out of some 1.3 million refugees Amman says it has hosted.
According to the United Nations, 680,000 Syrian refugees were registered with it in Jordan.
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