by Aziz El Yaakoubi and Samia Nakhoul
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, May 19 (Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al Assad received a warm welcome from his peers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Friday, completing his rehabilitation in the Arab League after 12 years of exclusion.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman sealed Assad’s return to the regional organization with a handshake, drawing a line under years of hostility from the kingdom and other Arab countries against the leader Syria, which allied with Shiite Iran and Russia to overcome the armed uprising born after the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The Saudi leader said he hoped that “Syria’s return to the Arab League would lead to an end to this crisis” and turn the page on “painful years of struggle”.
Bashar al Assad, whom many Arab countries want him to distance himself more from Tehran, assured that “the past, the present and the future” of Syria was “Arabism”, without a word in it. regard to the Islamic Republic.
The Syrian head of state, in conflict for years with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, whose auxiliary troops occupy northern Syria, on the other hand pointed to “the danger of Ottoman expansionist thought”, describing it as influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization banned by many Arab countries.
On the occasion of this 32nd Arab League summit, Mohamed ben Salman’s Saudi Arabia wants to appear as an essential diplomatic power, while the global energy crisis, the war in Ukraine and the tensions between the United States and China have restored weight to the world’s largest oil exporter on the international scene.
Arab leaders also welcomed Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, with the Wahhabi kingdom saying it was ready to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow. (French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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