DAMASCUS: Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa was in Cairo Tuesday for an Arab League summit on Gaza, his first such meeting since ousting longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad nearly three months ago.
Sharaa arrived “to attend the extraordinary Arab summit in Cairo on developments on the Palestinian issue”, state news agency SANA reported.
The Syrian presidency published images of Sharaa meeting with senior officials including United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and European Union chief Antonio Costa on the sidelines of the summit.
Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, led a lightning rebel offensive that ousted Assad on December 8, ending more than half a century of the family’s rule.
Sharaa was appointed interim president for an unspecified transitional period the following month.
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Under Assad, Syria was suspended from the Arab League over his brutal 2011 crackdown on pro-democracy protests which spiralled into a devastating civil war.
Damascus was allowed to return to the bloc in 2023 after years of regional isolation.
A UN Security Council committee approved a travel ban exemption for Sharaa, enabling him to visit Egypt for Tuesday’s summit despite his inclusion on a sanctions list.
The meeting was called in response to a widely criticised proposal by President Donald Trump for the United States to take over war-battered Gaza and redevelop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, forcing its Palestinian inhabitants to relocate to Egypt or Jordan.
Sharaa has called Trump’s proposal “a very huge crime that cannot happen”.
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