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Germany’s foreign minister in Syria after Assad overthrow
2 hours ago2 hours ago
Germany’s top diplomat Annalena Baerbock is to meet members of Syria’s rebel-formed transition government, after former Syrian President Bashar Assad was deposed. France’s foreign minister is also on the trip.
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Foreign Minister Baerbock travels to Damascus
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will be joined by French counterpart Jean-Noel BarrotImage: Dominik Butzmann/AA/photothek/picture alliance
Germany Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is in Damascus, Syria on Friday for talks with the country’s new rebel-formed government.
“My trip today — together with my French counterpart and on behalf of the EU — is a clear signal to the Syrians: A new political beginning between Europe and Syria, between Germany and Syria, is possible,” Baerbock said, according to a ministry statement issued before she left for Damascus.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot is also on the visit to Syria.
Syria’s ‘new chapter has begun’ — Baerbock
“The painful chapter of Assad’s rule is over. A new chapter has begun, but not yet written. Because at this moment the Syrians have the chance to take the fate of their state into their own hands again,” Baerbock said in a post on social media platform X.
It comes after rebel groups in Syria, led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), swiftly gained control over the country, with former President Bashar Assad fleeing to Russia. HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa is now considered the head of Syria’s transitonal government.
Baerbock has said that the new Syrian government’s relations with Germany and the EU is conditional on women and men of all ethnic and religious beliefs playing a role in Syria’s new political system and that they are protected.
In the days following Assad’s ousting, Western governments had been weighing up how best to engage with Syria’s new leadership considering HTS being under EU sanctions and also a designated terrorist group.
Nearly 1 million Syrians in Germany
According to the German Federal Statistical Office, around 973,000 Syrians were living in Germany at the end of 2023. Some 712,000 of them have been granted refugee status.
Most came in 2015, when Angela Merkel’s government decided to allow refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war into the country.
One day after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) issued an immediate freeze on asylum applications from Syrian citizens.
kb/wd (AFP, dpa)
