Assembly comes as new authorities search to reassure minorities of their security in post-Assad Syria.
Syria’s de facto chief Ahmed al-Sharaa met senior Christian clerics on Tuesday, amid requires the pinnacle of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to ensure minority rights after seizing energy earlier this month.
“The chief of the brand new Syrian administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, meets a delegation from the Christian group in Damascus,” Syria’s Basic Command stated in an announcement on Telegram.
The assertion included footage of the assembly with Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican clerics.
Earlier Tuesday, French Overseas Minister Jean-Noel Barrot known as for an inclusive political transition in Syria that ensures the rights of the nation’s various communities.
He expressed hope that “Syrians might take again management of their own destiny“.
However for this to occur, the nation wants “a political transition in Syria that features all communities of their range, that upholds essentially the most primary rights and elementary freedoms,” Barrot stated throughout a go to to Lebanon with Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu.
Barrot and Lecornu additionally met Lebanon’s military chief Joseph Aoun and visited United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the southern border, the place a fragile truce ended intense combating between Israel and Hezbollah in late November.
‘Constructive’ talks with SDF
Since seizing energy, Syria’s new management, headed by al-Sharaa, who was beforehand a member of al-Qaeda, has repeatedly tried to reassure minorities that they won’t be harmed, though some remoted incidents have sparked protests.
On December 25, hundreds protested in a number of areas of Syria after a video circulated displaying an assault on an Alawite shrine within the nation’s north.
A day earlier, a whole bunch of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus to protest towards the burning of a Christmas tree close to Hama in central Syria.
Earlier than the civil battle erupted in 2011, Syria was house to about a million Christians, in accordance with analyst Fabrice Balanche, who says their quantity has dwindled to about 300,000.
Earlier, a Syrian official informed the AFP information company that al-Sharaa held “optimistic” talks with delegates of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Monday.
The talks have been al-Sharaa’s first with SDF commanders since his rebels overthrew longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in early December and are available because the SDF is locked in combating with Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria.
The US-backed SDF spearheaded the army marketing campaign that pushed ISIL (ISIS) fighters from their final territory in Syria in 2019.
However Turkiye, which has lengthy had ties with al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, says that the SDF is led by members of the Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration (PKK), which has waged a four-decade rebel towards the Turkish state, and is branded a “terrorist” group in Turkiye and the US.
On Sunday, al-Sharaa informed Al Arabiya tv that the SDF ought to be built-in into the brand new nationwide military.
“Weapons should be within the fingers of the state alone. Whoever is armed and certified to hitch the defence ministry, we are going to welcome them,” he stated.
