PARIS (Reuters) -French President Emmanuel Macron will host a meeting with Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Paris on Wednesday, the French presidency said on Tuesday.
During the meeting, Macron will reaffirm France’s support for the construction of a “free, stable and sovereign Syria that respects all the components of the Syrian society,” the statement said.
The visit, the first for Sharaa to a European country since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, is expected to address several security challenges faced by the new Syrian government, with particular emphasis on the repeated Israeli attacks on Syria’s sovereignty, according to the state-run Syrian news agency SANA.
Sharaa in February received an invitation from Macron to visit France.
In January, Sharaa was named as interim president and pledged to form an inclusive transitional government that would build up Syria’s gutted public institutions and run the country until elections, which he said could take up to five years to hold.
Israel has escalated military operations in Syria since rebels ousted Assad in December, with bombings across the country and ground forces entering its southwest, while calling for Syria to remain decentralised and isolated.
It has framed its stance around its suspicion of Sharaa – who once headed a branch of al Qaeda before renouncing ties to the group in 2016 – and a desire to protect the Druze, a minority sect that is an offshoot of Islam with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
(Reporting by Domininique Vidalon and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris, Kinda Makieh, Writing by Menna Alaa El Din; Jaidaa Taha and Muhammad Al Gebaly, Editing by Chris Reese, Christian Schmollinger and Rod Nickel)
