BEIRUT, 15 Feb: Jordan\u2019s foreign minister Tuesday met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, vowing to continue delivering earthquake aid and work to find a political solution to Syria\u2019s 12-year conflict, Syrian state media reported.
\nAyman Safadi\u2019s visit to the earthquake-hit country makes him the first Jordanian official to do so since the onset of Syria\u2019s conflict in 2011. It marks a new thaw in relations between the two countries and more generally between Assad and the Arab world.
\nJordan\u2019s King Abdullah II had called Assad last week to express Amman\u2019s willingness to send humanitarian aid. Since then, cargo planes and trucks loaded with assistance from the neighboring country have reached Syria to help with relief efforts. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed over 1,400 people in government-held areas and displaced thousands more.
\nSafadi also met with Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad.
\n\u201cWe discussed our bilateral relations and efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis that ends this catastrophe,\u201d Safadi said after meeting Mekdad at Damascus airport. \u201cA solution that preserves Syria\u2019s unity and sovereignty.\u201d
\nAccording to a statement from Assad\u2019s office, the Syrian president thanked Jordan for its support, and told Safadi that the Syrian people \u201cwelcome any positive positions towards them, especially from brotherly Arab countries.\u201d
\nJordan, like most Arab countries since the start of Syria\u2019s civil war, reduced diplomatic relations with Syria in 2011. The kingdom also hosted Western-backed opposition groups and took in hundreds of thousands of refugees.
\nArab and Western countries generally blamed Assad for the deadly crackdown on the protests that erupted in 2011, and supported the opposition in the early days of the conflict, which displaced and killed millions of people.
\nAssad has since regained much of Syria\u2019s territory with the backing of key allies Russia and Iran, and some Arab countries that once shunned him have been slowly rekindling ties in recent years.
\nKing Abdullah II and Assad spoke for the first time in a decade in October 2021, discussing cooperation to bolster both countries\u2019 ailing economies over the phone.
\nUnited Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan met with Assad in Damascus on Sunday, while other Arab countries close to the United States, most notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have delivered aid to Damascus.
\nSome experts say that the earthquake and humanitarian crisis that compounded Syria\u2019s woes may accelerate normalization efforts between Assad and Arab countries that have shunned him for over a decade.
\nThe United States, which has strict sanctions on Syria, has eased some of them since the earthquake for humanitarian relief. But the U.S. has been critical of countries renewing relations with the embattled president without a political settlement to end the conflict. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIRUT, 15 Feb: Jordan\u2019s foreign minister Tuesday met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, vowing to continue delivering earthquake aid and work to find a political solution to Syria\u2019s 12-year conflict, Syrian state media reported. Ayman Safadi\u2019s visit to the earthquake-hit country makes him the first Jordanian official to do so since the onset […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}