DAMASCUS: Visiting EU Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica said on Thursday that a €175 million (nearly $183 million) package for Syria was a “clear message” of support for its reconstruction.

Suica announced the package in Damascus on Wednesday, saying it would focus on sectors including energy, education, health, and agriculture, helping rebuild Syria’s economy, support its institutions, and promote human rights.

“I came here ... with a clear message that we are here to assist and help Syria on its recovery,” Suica said in an interview on Thursday.

“We want that reconstruction and recovery will be Syria-owned and Syria-led,” she said, on the first visit by an EU commissioner since a transitional government was unveiled in late March.

“We want to see Syria be a regular, normal, democratic country in the future,” she added.

Syria has been navigating a delicate transition since Bashar Assad was ousted in December after nearly 14 years of civil war.

The EU announced last month it would lift economic sanctions on Syria in a bid to help its recovery.

“This is a pivotal moment — a new chapter in EU-Syria relations,” Suica said on X, calling her meeting with President Ahmad Al-Sharaa “constructive.”

Like Syria’s neighbors, Western governments are keen to steer it onto the road to stability after the war triggered an exodus of millions of refugees.

Refugee returns should be “safe, voluntary and dignified,” Suica said.

The EU has not designated Syria as a safe country for returns “because we don’t want to push people to come here and then they don’t have a home,” she said.

The EU last month sanctioned three Syrian groups and two of their leaders for human rights abuses over their alleged involvement in sectarian massacres in the coastal heartland of the Alawite minority, to which Assad belongs, in March.

“We cannot pronounce one part of Syria safe and another not,” Suica said, noting that designating Syria a safe country needs “unanimity among 27 European member states.”

She said Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani would attend a ministerial meeting involving almost a dozen Mediterranean countries in Brussels on June 23.

A statement released on Wednesday said that the European Commission was “actively pursuing the integration of Syria into several key initiatives with its Mediterranean partner countries.”

“We want to see Syria united and inclusive, Suica said. 

“This is a process. It will happen step by step.”

LONDON: Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza means a generation of Palestinian children are being denied a chance in life, the head of the UN’s World Food Program said on Thursday.

Israel imposed a full blockade on food and relief supplies from entering the territory on March 2, before breaking a ceasefire and resuming its devastating military operation a few weeks later.

Limited supplies were allowed back in late last month but nowhere near to the scale required, WFP Director Cindy McCain told Sky News.

“It’s very, very important that people realize that the only way to stave off malnutrition, catastrophic food insecurity and, of course, famine would be by complete and total access for organizations like mine,” she said.

“We’re looking at a generation of children that won’t have a chance in life because they haven’t had the proper nutrients. Right now, we’re looking at over 500,000 people within Gaza that are catastrophically food insecure.”

The resumption of limited aid supplies came after Israel built new distribution hubs in the territory run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a newly formed US organization.

Previously, the UN’s Palestinian refugees agency UNRWA and the WFP were in charge of distributing aid in the territory. But Israel has banned UNWRA from working in Gaza and has taken control of the aid system.

Scores of Palestinians have been shot dead this week as they attempted to access one of the new aid hubs in the south of the territory.

McCain said the new system was not allowing enough aid to get into Gaza to feed its malnourished population.

Speaking to “The World with Yalda Hakim,” she urged Israel to allow international aid to “get in at scale.”

“We need safe, unfettered, clear access all the way in and we're not getting that right now,” she said.

Her comments came as the GHF resumed its operations on Thursday after shutting down on Wednesday in response to the number of deaths near its hub.

McCain is the latest aid agency chief to deliver strongly worded condemnation of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where its military operation has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians since October 2023.

On Wednesday, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric said Gaza had become “worse than hell on earth.”