Syria appoints new ambassador to Egypt, Arab League amid re-admission

Syria has appointed a new ambassador to Egypt and the Arab League, almost two months after the regional body reinstated Damascus back into its fold.

According to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), president Bashar Al-Assad appointed Houssam Al-Din Ala as Syria’s new ambassador to Egypt and, additionally, as its representative at the Arab League.

Ala – who had previously served as Syria’s Permanent Envoy to the United Nations in Geneva for eight years, was ambassador to the Vatican and Spain, and worked at the UN’s Syrian mission in New York – presented his credentials to Arab League Secretary-General, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, on Sunday.

It cemented the 22-member bloc’s reinstatement of Damascus after a 12-year expulsion, following the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protestors amid the protests which swept through Syria and the wider Arab world in 2011.

The Assad regime’s re-admission into the League comes amid the increasing restoration of relations with Damascus by other Arab states over the past few years, the latest of which was Saudi Arabia and the pivotal access to the Arab fold that the Kingdom offered.

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