Antony Blinken confirms ‘direct’ US contact with Syria’s rebel rulers HTS | Syria

Antony Blinken said the US had made “direct contact” with Syria’s victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels as western and Arab states along with Turkey jointly voiced support for a united, peaceful Syria.

The US secretary of state’s comment is despite Washington having designated the HTS rebels as terrorists in 2018.

Blinken and other diplomats held talks on Syria in Aqaba, Jordan, on Saturday. “We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said, without specifying how the contact took place.

Turkey announced it had reopened its embassy in Damascus, nearly a week after the Islamist-led rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and 12 years after the Turkish diplomatic mission was closed early in Syria’s civil war.

Turkey has been a major player in Syria’s conflict, holding considerable sway in the north-west, financing armed groups there and maintaining a working relationship with HTS, which spearheaded the offensive that toppled Assad.

In a joint statement after the meeting in Jordan, diplomats from the US, Turkey, the EU and Arab countries “affirmed the full support to the Syrian people at this critical point in their history to build a more hopeful, secure and peaceful future”.

They called for a Syrian-led transition to “produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government formed through a transparent process”, with respect for human rights.

“Syria finally has the chance to end decades of isolation,” the group said.

The head of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, in the country’s north-east, on Saturday appealed for Kurds “to adopt a favourable position toward the Syrian dialogue”.

The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, urged participants in the Jordan talks to provide humanitarian aid and to ensure “that state institutions do not collapse”.

A Qatari diplomat said on Friday that a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to meet transitional government officials for talks on aid and reopening its embassy.

Unlike other Arab states, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.

The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said in Jordan that the bloc, Syria’s biggest aid provider, was “interested in rebuilding and reconstruction of Syria”.

Assad’s flight from Syria last weekend left Syrians in joyous disbelief at the sudden end to an era in which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed. It capped more than a decade of war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaida and is designated a terrorist organisation by many western governments, but has sought to moderate its rhetoric.

“We appreciate some of the positive words we heard in recent days, but what matters is action – and sustained action,” Blinken said. If a transition moved forward, “we in turn will look at various sanctions and other measures that we have taken”.

Pubs and liquor stores in Damascus initially closed after the rebel victory but have been tentatively reopening.

“You have the right to work and live your life as you did before,” Safi, the landlord of Papa bar in the Old City, said the rebels had told him.

But in Abu Dhabi, Anwar Gargash, a presidential adviser in the UAE, said “we need to be on guard” despite HTS’s talk of unity.

The country’s situation remains highly volatile. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an ambush by “loyalist elements of the former regime” killed at least four rebel fighters near a villa belonging to an Assad relative on the Mediterranean coast.

With Agence France-Presse