Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: The United States has called on all states to think twice about rehabilitating Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad after his defense minister held a breakthrough meeting with Turkey.
US state department
According to the Agence France-Presse (AFP), President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the key supporter of rebels seeking to topple Bashar since 2011, has voiced openness to meeting the Syrian leader after rival neighbors’ defense ministers met the previous week in Russia.
We do not support states upgrading their relations and expressing support to rehabilitate the brutal dictator al-Assad, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters. Price said that we urge states to carefully consider the Assad regime’s atrocious human rights record of the past 12 years as it continues to inflict atrocities on the Syrian people and to deny access to life-saving humanitarian aid.
Al-Assad, helped by Russian airpower, has largely restored control over Syria after the issue that has killed half a million citizens, displaced half the country’s pre-war population, and saw a rise of the Islamic State extremist group.
With the previous year registering the lowest death toll since the issue erupted, a growing number of states have been accepting Assad as a victor. He flew in March 2022 to the United Arab Emirates, the US ally, on his first trip to another Arab nation since the war.
Hoping to assuage opposition, Turkey on Tuesday welcomed its leader and reiterated support for a United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution that calls for a political settlement in Syria.
The United States, under a so-called Caesar Act that took effected in 2020, authorizes sanctions against Al-Assad over war abuses or bars US support for reconstruction without accountability.
