WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has pledged to do everything possible to help Syria following talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful because that’s part of the Middle East,” Trump told reporters. Trump said later on his social media site that he plans to meet and speak with the Syrian leader again.
Al-Sharaa, in an interview on Fox News, said he and Trump talked about investment opportunities in Syria in the future, “so that Syria is no longer looked at as a security threat. It is now looked at as a geopolitical ally. And it’s a place where the United States can have great investments, especially in extracting gas.”
Sharaa’s visit marked a remarkable year for the former rebel leader who overthrew longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad and has since been seeking to reunite his war-torn country and end decades of international isolation.
The meeting between Trump and Sharaa was the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to Washington, coming six months after their initial encounter in Saudi Arabia, where Trump announced plans to lift sanctions on Damascus.
Al-Sharaa, who first met President Trump in Riyadh in May, was officially removed from the US “terrorist” sanctions list on Friday.
Earlier this month, US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack expressed hope that al-Sharaa would soon sign an agreement to join the international US-led coalition against Daesh.
According to reports from Reuters and AFP, Washington is also preparing to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus to support a security pact being brokered between Syria and Israel.
However, Syria’s state news agency SANA cited a foreign ministry source denying these claims.
The World Bank has estimated that Syria’s reconstruction could cost at least $216 billion — a figure it described as a “conservative best estimate.”
