Syria leader vows country will not negatively interfere in Lebanon
Walid Junblatt, Turkey’s top diplomat meet new Syria leader
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al Sharaa told Lebanese Druze leaders on Sunday that his country would not negatively interfere in Lebanon and would respect its neighbour’s sovereignty.
Syria will no longer exert “negative interference in Lebanon at all - it respects Lebanon’s sovereignty, the unity of its territories, the independence of its decisions and its security stability,” Sharaa told visiting Druze chiefs Walid and Taymur Junblatt.
Walid Junblatt is the first Lebanese figure to meet Sharaa since his Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) and allied rebel factions launched a lightning offensive last month, seizing Damascus on December 8 and ousting longtime ruler Bashar Al Assad.
Syria “will stay at equal distance from all” in Lebanon, Sharaa added, acknowledging that Syria has been a “source of fear and anxiety” for the country.
Walid Junblatt, long a fierce critic of Assad and his father Hafez who ruled Syria before him, arrived in Damascus Sunday at the head of a delegation of lawmakers from his parliamentary bloc and religious figures from Lebanon’s Druze minority.
He met with Sharaa - until recently known more widely by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al Jolani - at the presidential palace, where the new Syrian leader was wearing a suit and tie.
HTS has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by many Western governments, including the United States, though it has recently sought to moderate its rhetoric and vowed to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.
Walid Junblatt accuses the Syrian authorities of having assassinated his father in 1977 during Lebanon’s civil war.
Numerous other assassinations have been blamed on the Assad family’s government over the decades.
The Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976 as part of an Arab force that was supposed to put an end to the country’s civil war, which began a year earlier.
But instead it became the dominant military and political force, looming over all aspects of Lebanese life.
Syrian forces only quit Lebanon in 2005 after enormous pressure following the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, a killing attributed to Damascus and its ally Hezbollah.
Turkey’s top diplomat meets Sharaa
Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan also met Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, Ankara’s foreign ministry said.
A video released by the Anadolu state news agency showed the two men greeting each other.
No details of where the meeting took place in the Syrian capital were released by the ministry.
Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria’s new leaders, who ousted Syria’s strongman Bashar al-Assad after a lightning offensive.
Turkey’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Assad’s fall.
Kalin was filmed leaving the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, surrounded by bodyguards, as broadcast by the private Turkish channel NTV.
Turkey has been a key backer of the opposition to Assad since the uprising against his rule began in 2011.
Besides supporting various rebel groups, it has welcomed Syrian dissenters and millions of refugees.
However, Fidan has rejected claims by US president-elect Donald Trump that the rebels’ victory in Syria constituted an “unfriendly takeover” of the country by Turkey.