European foreign ministers have agreed to meet at the end of January to discuss lifting sanctions on Syria as foreign ministers and top diplomats from Western countries and the Middle East convened in Saudi Arabia in the first such regional meeting since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad last month.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said on Sunday that the foreign ministers would convene in Brussels on January 27 to probe how the 27-member bloc might approach the issue.
In Riyadh, she told reporters that the EU wants to see an inclusive government in Syria which shows no signs of “radicalisation” and also respects the rights of women and other groups. The bloc can quickly reverse any openings on the issue of sanctions, she stressed.
After Sunday’s talks concluded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister called for the lifting of sanctions on Syria.
“We stressed the importance of lifting unilateral and international sanctions imposed on Syria, as their continuation hinders the aspirations of the Syrian people to achieve development and reconstruction,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said.
Syria’s new Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, who has repeatedly called for the removal of decades-old sanctions, attended the talks, alongside foreign ministers from the region including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkiye.
Credit: Aljazeera.com
