An effort is underway in the region to mend relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after a decade of hostility, and on Sunday, Arab foreign ministers will gather at the Arab League in Cairo to address Syria, according to a League spokeswoman.
According to Gamal Roshdy, a spokesman for the secretary general of the Arab League, the foreign ministers will hold a separate gathering on Sunday to discuss the crisis that broke out in Sudan last month.
Following a brutal assault on anti-Assad street protests that sparked a deadly civil war, Syria’s membership in the Arab League was suspended in 2011, and numerous Arab states withdrew their envoys from Damascus.
Several Arab nations, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have recently resumed high-level contacts with Syria. However, some, like Qatar, are still opposed to full normalisation in the absence of a political solution to the conflict in Syria.
Arab nations have been attempting to come to an agreement on whether to invite Assad to the Arab League meeting on May 19 in Riyadh to debate the rate of rapprochement and the conditions under which Syria might be permitted to return.
Although it had long resisted, Saudi Arabia recently reestablished ties with Iran, Syria’s main regional partner, and said that a new strategy was required with Damascus.
