DOHA: Syria’s de facto rulers said on Sunday that US sanctions on Syria were an obstacle to the war-torn country’s rapid recovery and urged Washington to lift them during a visit by Syrian officials to Qatar.

“These sanctions constitute a barrier and an obstacle to the rapid recovery and development of the Syrian people who await services and partnerships from other countries,” Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani told reporters after meeting with Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as foreign minister.

“We reiterate our calls for the United States to lift these sanctions, which have now become against the Syrian people rather than what they previously were: imposed sanctions on the Assad regime,” he reasoned.

Shibani, on his second foreign trip less than a month after ouster of president Bashar al-Assad on Dec 8, said Qatar would be ‘a partner in the new phase’ in Syria.

Doha had not normalised ties with Assad over his government’s violent response to 2011 protests and backed the Syrian opposition instead.

Shibani, who was joined by defence minister Murhaf Abu Qasra and head of intelligence Anas Khattab, also met Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, a Qatari official said.

Al-Khulaifi told reporters after the meeting that Syrian leaders presented a clear roadmap and steps being taken by the new Syrian administration. Shibani said the roadmap is meant to “rebuild our country, restore its Arab and foreign relations, enable the Syrian people to obtain their civil and basic rights, and present a government that the Syrian people feel it represents them and all their components.”

He is expected to also visit the United Arab Emirates and Jordan this week to “support stability, security, economic recovery and build distinguished partnerships,” according to his account on X.

Meanwhile, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric in an interview told AFP that determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria’s civil war would be a massive challenge “likely to take years”.

Spoljaric said the ICRC was working with the caretaker authorities, non-governmental organisations and the Syrian Red Crescent to collect data on the missing to give families answers as soon as possible. But “the task is enormous”, she said. “It will take years to get clarity and to be able to inform everybody concerned. And there will be cases we will never (be able) to identify,” she added.

On the other hand, Ankara said its military had “neutralised” 32 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in the country as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told his party’s provincial congress in Trabzon that Syria’s new leadership was determined to root out separatists there. “The end of the terrorist organisation is near. There is no option left other than to surrender their weapons, abandon terrorism, and dissolve the organisation. They will face Turkey’s iron fist,” Erdogan said.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2025