JEDDAH/PARIS: France and Turkey plan to create a “diplomatic road map” for an end to the war in Syria, President Emmanuel Macron’s office said on Sunday.
Macron spoke by telephone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday, focusing on Turkey’s military offensive against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
The French leader infuriated Turkish officials last week when he said France would have a “real problem” with the campaign if it turned out to be an invasion of northern Syria. Erdogan assured him that Ankara had no eye on Syrian territory.
“The two presidents agreed to work on a diplomatic road map for Syria in the coming weeks,” the Elysee Palace said on Sunday. “To that end, discussions between France and Turkey, which both hope for a political solution overseen by the UN, will increase in the coming days.”
Syrian opposition leaders also demanded on Sunday that the UN supervise the Syrian peace process, and they rejected the outcome of last week’s Russian-backed peace congress in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
“We at the SNC (Syrian Negotiations Commission) are studying some sort of a road map or a practical guide for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254 with concentration on the constitutional process and the electoral process,” opposition spokesman Yahya Al-Aridi told Arab News.
“We are looking forward to certain amendments that will facilitate the implementation of the resolution.”
Resolution 2254, passed in December 2015, demands that all parties cease attacks against civilian targets, urges all UN member states to support efforts to achieve a cease-fire and asks the UN to convene the parties to engage in formal negotiation.
The SNC restated their demand that any new constitution proposed for Syria should not allow President Bashar Assad to stay in power. Their concerns have grown after 1,400 delegates at the Sochi conference agreed to set up a committee to draft a constitution.
SNC chief negotiator Nasr Hariri rejected the committee and said several “internationally sanctioned war criminals” had taken part in the conference. Al-Aridi also said pro-regime militias, including those who had committed massacres in Syria, attended the Sochi congress.
Al-Aridi told Arab News that any constitutional committee should be established in Geneva by Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy on Syria, and should comprise only two negotiating parties — the SNC and the Syrian regime. He called on the UN to pressurize Russia to deliver on its commitments.
The Geneva process should be “the basis for implementing a political solution in Syria while the Astana process aimed to establish a cease-fire and therefore remove all obstacles hindering the negotiation process,” Hariri said.
The SNC said no constitutional or electoral process could be successful without allowing for a transitional period that provided the people of Syria with a suitable environment to freely express their opinions.
“All attention is now directed toward the next Geneva round to see whether the regime will seriously enter the negotiations process and respond to the political transition and the constitutional processes, or will remain intransigent and continue to refuse to implement international resolutions,” Hariri said.
France, Turkey plan ‘road map’ to end Syrian war
France, Turkey plan ‘road map’ to end Syrian war
Israeli strikes hit Yemen’s Sanaa and Hodeidah, Houthis’ Al Masirah TV says
- Houthis said that multiple air raids targeted an airport, military air base and a power station in Yemen
JERUSALEM: Multiple air raids hit several targets in Houthi-held areas of Yemen on Thursday, witnesses and the militia said, with their media saying Israel launched the strikes.
Sanaa airport and the adjacent Al-Dailami base were targeted along with a power station in Hodeida, in attacks that the Houthis’ Al-Masirah TV channel called “Israeli aggression.”
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the strikes, which come a day after Yemen fired a ballistic missile and two drones at Israel.
On Saturday, a Houthi missile attack left 16 people wounded in Tel Aviv.
Saturday’s incident had prompted a warning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he had ordered the destruction of Houthi infrastructure.
“I have instructed our forces to destroy the infrastructure of Houthis because anyone who tries to harm us will be struck with full force,” Netanyahu said in parliament.
“We will continue to crush the forces of evil with strength and ingenuity, even if it takes time.”
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”
