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Opposition seeks to take Syria’s Arab League seat

March 7, 2022 at 10:09 am

Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit in Kuwait City on January 30, 2022 [Jaber Abdulkhaleg/Anadolu Agency]

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces has met with Arab League Secretary-General, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, to discuss occupying Syria’s vacant seat in the League.

In November 2011, the Arab League froze Syria’s membership, after President Bashar Al-Assad used violent means to quell a popular peaceful revolution.

In May 2013, Arab foreign ministers granted Syria’s seat to the national coalition of revolutionary and opposition forces. The coalition attended as a representative of Syria during the league’s meetings in 2013 and 2014. However, it has not been invited to any of the league’s summits since, amid reports of differences between Arab capitals in this regard.

On Sunday, the coalition said in a series of tweets, that the meeting with Aboul Gheit included a discussion of “activating the league’s role in pushing for a political transition in Syria” and the need for the league to follow up on isolating the current regime that has lost legitimacy politically and economically to force it to submit to a political solution, as well as the need to hand over Syria’s seat in the league to the coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

The Arab League said that “Aboul Gheit listened with interest to the coalition delegation.”

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“Aboul Gheit stressed that the political solution remains the only way out of the crisis and the need to do everything possible at the current stage in order to stop this suffering,” the statement added.

Late last year UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan visited Al-Assad in Damascus. With the countries agreeing to further economic ties. The developments are seen as an early indicator of Arab states’ willingness to normalise ties with Damascus.

In 2018, the UAE reopened its embassy in Damascus, followed by Bahrain which said the Syrian Embassy in Manama was operating as usual. Defying US pressure, the UAE sent a large business delegation to the Damascus International Fair several months after re-opening its embassy.

Direct flights between Syria’s Damascus and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s cities of Dubai and Sharjah resumed on 20 June, the Syrian Ministry of Transport announced.