US diplomats and hostage envoy make first visit to Syria
The first US diplomats to visit Syria since President Bashar Assad’s ousting earlier this month held talks with transitional officials in Damascus on Friday to press for an inclusive government and seek information on the whereabouts of missing American journalist Austin Tice.
The top American diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, former special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein and the Biden administration’s chief envoy for hostage negotiations, Roger Carstens, met with interim leaders and members of civil society, officials said.
Details of the meetings were not immediately available and a news conference the officials had planned was cancelled because of unspecified security concerns.
Ms Leaf and the others had left the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus earlier on Friday without making any comments to waiting journalists.
The State Department said the delegation’s agenda would concentrate on seeking information about Mr Tice as well as pushing the principles of minority rights and a rejection of terrorism. The administration says those will be critical for US support for a new government.
Shortly before the delegation arrived in Damascus, the US military said it had conducted airstrikes in northeastern Syria on Thursday, killing a leader of the so-called Islamic State group and one other militant.
Ms Leaf’s team is also the first group of American diplomats to visit Syria formally for more than a decade, since the US shut its embassy in Damascus in 2012, although a small number of US diplomats had been assigned to political advisory roles with military units inside Syria since then.
“They will be engaging directly with the Syrian people, including members of civil society, activists, members of different communities, and other Syrian voices about their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” the State Department said.
The US has redoubled efforts to find Mr Tice and return him home, saying officials have communicated with the rebels who ousted Mr Assad’s government about the American journalist. Mr Carstens travelled previously to Lebanon to seek information.
Mr Tice, who has had his work published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and others, disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus as the Syrian civil war intensified.
A video released weeks after Mr Tice went missing showed him blindfolded and held by armed men and saying, “Oh, Jesus”. He has not been heard from since. Mr Assad’s government publicly denied that it was holding him.
The rebel group that spearheaded the assault on Damascus that forced Mr Assad to flee — Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS — is designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the US and others. While that designation comes with a raft of sanctions, it does not prohibit US officials from speaking to its members or leaders.
The State Department said Mr Rubinstein, Ms Leaf and Mr Carstens would meet HTS officials but did not say if the group’s leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with al Qaida, would be among them.
US officials say Mr al-Sharaa’s public statements about protecting minority and women’s rights are welcomed, but they remain sceptical that he will follow through on them in the long run.
Although the US has not had a formal diplomatic presence in Syria since 2012, there are US troops in small parts of Syria engaged in the fight against the Islamic State militant group.
The Pentagon revealed Thursday that the US had doubled the number of its forces in Syria to fight IS before Mr Assad’s fall.
The US also has significantly stepped up airstrikes against IS targets over concern that a power vacuum would allow the militant group to reconstitute itself.
The diplomats’ visit to Damascus will not result in the immediate reopening of the US embassy, which is under the protection of the Czech government, according to US officials, who said decisions on diplomatic recognition will be made when the new Syrian authorities make their intentions clear.