WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. officers arrived in Damascus on Friday for the primary diplomatic mission to the Syrian capital for the reason that fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad this month.
The U.S. delegation, led by Barbara Leaf, the senior State Department official for the Middle East, is predicted to fulfill with members of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) insurgent group, in response to a State Department spokesperson. The group is performing because the de facto authorities in Syria.
Those discussions are anticipated to give attention to expectations for a transition to an inclusive Syrian authorities and the “hope to uncover details about the destiny of Austin Tice, Majd Kamalmaz, and different American residents who disappeared below the Assad regime,” the spokesperson stated in a press release.
Roger Carstens, the particular presidential envoy for hostage affairs, who traveled to Damascus in 2020 for secret negotiations about Tice through the first Trump administration, can also be part of the delegation.
In addition to HTS, the diplomats will meet with members of civil society, activists, members of various communities and different Syrians “about their imaginative and prescient for the way forward for their nation and the way the United States may also help help them,” the spokesperson stated.
Daniel Rubinstein, a senior adviser for the State Department’s Middle East bureau, will lead the division’s diplomatic engagement on Syria, in response to the spokesperson, and can “have interaction immediately with the Syrian individuals and key events in Syria and coordinate with allies and companions.”
Since Assad’s ouster, the Biden administration has come below rising strain to place U.S. personnel on the bottom to take part within the seek for Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria 12 years in the past.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated Thursday the United States was in contact with “each doable actor who would possibly be capable to get info. And this includes anybody and everybody who has some relationship with the totally different rising authorities in Syria.”
“Any piece of data we get, any lead now we have, we’re following it. We have methods of doing that regardless of precisely the place we’re,” Blinken stated in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And I can simply let you know that that is the No. 1 precedence is to get Austin.”
The U.S. delegation’s go to follows visits by diplomats from France, the U.Ok. and Germany to Damascus this week because the chief of HTS, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, requires the lifting of worldwide sanctions on him and the insurgent group.
HTS stays a U.S.-designated terrorist group with a $10 million bounty on Jolani. The sanctions don’t stop the U.S. delegation from assembly or talking with HTS, nevertheless it restricts the availability of fabric help creating problems for humanitarian assist teams working to help each the refugees flooding again to their residence nation and people displaced inside it for the final decade.
The Biden administration is exploring eradicating HTS from its terrorist checklist, NBC News has reported, however the administration has additionally laid out a listing of situations it should meet earlier than the United States would formally acknowledge the Syrian authorities.
“Our view is that when no matter authorities arises out of this transition, it must be inclusive, it wants to guard the rights of all Syrians, together with girls and minorities, like all governments, it must protect crucial state establishments and ship important providers,” deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel stated Thursday. “And maybe most necessary, we wish to see a Syria that doesn’t pose a menace to its neighbors or the areas or being a spot that’s going to function a base for terrorism or allying with teams like ISIS.”