The Biden The administration said Friday it has decided not to pursue a $10 million reward it offered for the capture of a Syrian rebel leader whose forces led the ouster of President Bashar Assad earlier this month.
The announcement followed a meeting in Damascus between the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, Ahmad al-Sharaa, once aligned with al-Qaida, and the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, who led the U.S. ‘s first diplomatic delegation to Syria since Assad was ousted.
HTS remains designated as a foreign terrorist organization, and Leaf would not say whether the sanctions stemming from that designation would be eased. But she told reporters that al-Sharaa had pledged to renounce terrorism and as a result the US would no longer offer the reward.
“We discussed the critical need to ensure that terrorist groups cannot pose a threat inside Syria or externally, including to the United States and our partners in the region,” she said.
“Based on our discussion, I told him that we would not proceed with the Rewards for Justice reward,” Leaf said in a telephone news conference from Jordan, where she was traveling after visiting Syria.
Leaf and other U.S. officials have said that al-Sharaa’s public statements about protecting minorities and women’s rights are welcomed, but they remain skeptical that he will follow through on them in the long term.
“He came across as pragmatic,” she said. – It was a good first meeting. We will judge by actions, not just words.”
USA. The delegation’s visit was aimed at pushing for an inclusive government and seeking information on the whereabouts of missing American journalist Austin Tice.
Along with Leaf, former special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein and the Biden administration’s chief envoy for hostage negotiations, Roger Carstens, joined the meetings with interim leaders and members of civil society.
Carstens said there was no new information confirming Tice’s fate or whereabouts but vowed efforts to find him would continue. He previously traveled to Lebanon to seek information. More US officials are expected to visit Syria in the coming days to take up the search, he said.
“We’re going to be like bulldogs on this,” Carstens said, adding that the U.S. was focusing on about six prisons where it was believed Tice may have been held in the past. He said the U.S. also had information about three additional prisons where Tice may have been held, and up to 40 locations may end up being investigated for evidence of Tice’s presence.
Tice, whose work has been published by The Washington Post, McClatchy papers and others, disappeared at a checkpoint in a disputed area west of Damascus as the Syrian civil war intensified.
A video released weeks after Tice’s disappearance showed him blindfolded and held by gunmen saying, “Oh, Jesus.” He has not been heard from since. Assad’s government publicly denied holding him.
Leaf’s team was the first group of US diplomats to formally visit Syria in more than a decade, since the US closed its embassy in Damascus in 2012, although a small number of US diplomats had been assigned political advisory roles with military units in Syria since then. then.
Just before the delegation entered Damascusthe US military said it had carried out airstrikes in northeastern Syria on Thursday, killing a leader of the Islamic State group and another militant. The strike was part of an ongoing effort to prevent IS insurgents from taking advantage of the upheaval in Syria, including any plans to release the more than 8,000 IS prisoners held by Kurds who have cooperated with the US, Central Command said in a statement.
The Pentagon revealed on Thursday that the US had doubled the number of its forces in Syria to fight IS before Assad’s fall. There are about 2,000 there now.
The diplomats’ visit to Damascus will not result in the immediate reopening of the U.S. embassy, which is under the protection of the Czech government, according to U.S. officials, who said decisions on diplomatic recognition will be made when the new Syrian authorities make their intentions known. clear.
