DUBAI | Syrian President Bashar al-Assad traveled to the United Arab Emirates on Friday for his first visit to an Arab country since the start of the conflict which ravaged his country in 2011, announced the official Emirati agency Wam.
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The Syrian president, banned from the Arab world for a decade, was received by the de facto leader of the Emirates, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed, to discuss “fraternal relations” between the two countries, according to the Emirati agency Wam.
The two men spoke of “cooperation and coordination between the two brotherly countries” with a view to “contributing to security, stability and peace in the Arab world and in the Middle East”, adds the same source. .
Syria had been excluded from the Arab League at the end of 2011, the Arab countries, including those of the Gulf, protesting against the repression carried out by the power of Damascus against pro-democracy demonstrations, triggering a devastating war.
In February 2012, the Emirates and the five other countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) announced the withdrawal of their ambassadors from Syria, denouncing in a joint press release the “collective massacre” committed by the Syrian authorities.
But at the end of 2018, Abu Dhabi, which is increasingly assuming its divergent positions on the diplomatic scene, had reopened its embassy in Damascus, while the question of Syria’s return to the Arab League continues to divide.
Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan met the Syrian president in Damascus last November during the first visit by a senior official of the Gulf monarchy since the start of the war in Syria in 2011. .
Bashar al-Assad, who ended his visit late Friday, also met there with Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, the other major emirate in the country where he had landed earlier.