The foreign ministers of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt are set to arrive in Jordanon 1 May to continue talks over Syria’s return to the Arab League and a political settlement to the 12-year-long war.
According to Sinan al-Majali, a spokesperson for Jordan’s foreign ministry, the meeting in Amman “comes in continuation of the consultative meeting held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on 14 April.”
“[The talks are aimed at] building on the outcomes of the communications these countries made with the Syrian government within their proposals and the Jordanian initiative to reach a political solution to the Syrian crisis,” he added.
Officials that spoke with Reuters said the Jordanian initiative establishes a step-by-step road map to end the conflict, including “tackling the issue of refugees, the fate of thousands of missing detainees, drug smuggling between Syria and the Gulf through Jordan, and the presence of Iranian militias in Syria.”
Monday’s meeting will be the first with a top Syrian official by a group of Arab states, some of which endorsed the move to suspend Damascus’ membership to the Arab League in 2011 and even helped fuel the war.
Nations across the Arab world have recently moved to rebuild ties with Damascus after the glaring failure of the western-backed war. Chief among these is Saudi Arabia, which last month shocked the world by agreeing to restart diplomatic ties with long-time rival Iran under the auspices of China.
On 15 April, Saudi Arabia hosted a meeting of the Jordanian, Egyptian, Iraqi, and GCC foreign ministers in Jeddah to discuss a solution to the Syrian crisis and the so-called ‘Arab peace plan’ jointly developed by Riyadh and Amman.
However, this peace plan faced pushback from Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, and Egypt.
The governments opposing Syria’s readmission into the Arab League reportedly doubled down on previous demands that Damascus accepts Arab troops in its territory and ask Iran to “stop expanding its footprint in the nation.”
The Saudi push to rekindle ties with Syria has also raised alarms in Washington, with officials warning last week that the White House will not support any normalization efforts with Syria “in the absence of permanent political change.”