President Trump said Tuesday that he would lift US sanctions to Syria, throwing an economic life line to a country devastated for almost 14 years of civil war and decades of dictatorship under the Assad family.
Trump was expected to meet for the first time with the new president of Syria, Ahmed Al-Sharar, Wednesday in Saudi Arabia, where the US leader is making the first important state visit of his second term. Mr. Al-Shara directed the rebel alliance that defeated President Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December.
The president of the United States made the surprise announcement to end the sanctions when he went to a business forum in the Saudi capital, Riad, where the crowd exploded with cheers and gave him a standing ovation.
The representatives of the decision a maritime change for Syria, breaking the economic domain in a country seen as a critic for the stability of the Middle East.
“There is a new government that, hopefully, must stabilize the country and maintain peace,” Trump said. “That is what we want to see in Syria.”
In Syria, people are poured into the streets of the main cities to encourage the news that they expect to relieve the overwhelming poverty facing the majority of the population.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asad Hassan Al-Shaibani praised the measure as “a new beginning on the road to reconstruction” and praised Saudi Arabia as the “voice of reason and wisdom” in the region. He did not mention the United States directly.
Since the expulsion of Mr. Al-Assad, Syria’s has argued that the fall of the regime should end the sanctions.
“The sanctions were implemented as an answer to the crimes committed by the previous regime against people,” Al-Shara told New York Times in an interview last month.
Many of the sanctions were in their place in response to the brutal repression of Assad’s governments against an uprising that was in 2011 and descended to a civil war that killed hundreds of thoughts.
Trump said he had made the decision after talking with Turkey president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who supported the anti -ssad insurgency, and the heir prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman.
Trump has been trying to increase Saudi investment in the United States, and the Saudi prince said this week that he would work to increase Riad’s total place to $ 1 billion of $ 600 billion, as the president requested.
“I will order the cessation of sanctions to Syria,” Trump said Tuesday, speaking in front of the giant projections of the United States and Saudi flags to an audience sitting under a mass spider lamp. “Oh, what I do for the heir prince,” he added, causing laughter of the enthusiastic crowd.
Trump, who has cultivated diplomatic and commercial relations close to the kingdom, landed in Riyadh to a luxurious welcome. The Saudi launched an honor guard, a team of Arab horses and a multitude of realists and business leaders to greet him.
The cozy relations between Mr. Trump and the kingdom offered Gulf leaders the opportunity to boost the lifting of sanctions to Syria, which many consider that they are critical to vote the economic collapse and the prevention of a new conflict that could extend beyond their borders.
“The Syrian economy is in pieces, but the region is in preparation, if not desperate, to help recover it,” wrote Charles Lister, main member of the Middle East Institute in Washington, in an email. “With the sanctions of the United States outside the road, Syria will do it for the first time in decades can look forward towards reconstruction and reintegration in the world.”
In the Syrian capital, Damascus, thousands of Juerguistas gathered in the Plaza Umayya Central, stirring Syrian and Saudi flags while fired. Some sang revolutionary slogans against Mr. Al-Assad. And expressed their joy that their country can soon reimburse themselves to the global financial system and begin to rebuild.
“Things will get cheaper,” said Al-Moussa, 49, a local government employee. “We can buy our children the things they want and give them a good education. We will be as another country.”
She had come to the square with her sister, brother, mother and other relatives to celebrate and said that the announcement had changed her idea of Mr. Triunfo.
“We didn’t like Trump a lot before, but now we loved him because he was standing with us,” he said.
She also had another desire: “We hope our salaries will rise a bit.”
The crowds also celebrated in the main cities of Homs and Aleppo.
It was not yet clear how extensive the president of the United States could have been on Wednesday with Mr. Al-Shara. A White House official said Trump agreed to “greet” the Syrian leader while both were in Saudi Arabia, according to the press pool that was traveling with the president of the United States.
In his speech on Tuesday, Trump criticized Iran, one of the main international allies of the Assad dictatorship expelled. He called the country “the greatest and most destructive force” that threatened the stability and prosperity of the Middle East, and promised that he would never have a nuclear weapon.
If Mr. Al-Shara obtains a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Trump, Hey has a strange opportunity to present his case to a world leader with the power to drastically give the future of Syria. It would also be an impressive change for the man who directed an Al Qaeda branch before breaking the ties with the jihadist group, seeking to modify his image with the hope of winning a broader traction.
In the months since a rebel coalition he took control or damask and demolished Mr. Al-Assad, the United States has maintained a regime of sanctions of several layers that, with war, has taken the country to the edge of the economic collapse.
Critics of US sanctions argued that lifting them could allow a necessary international aid and investment flow to help the country recover from war.
European leaders, eager to encourage stability and prevent new waves of migration to their coasts, have also pressed for greater economic participation.
However, even when Europe began to lift some sanctions, few regional companies or governments had been willing to invest in the country under the burden of US sanctions, and without knowing whether Mr. Trump would increase the anger.
The Trump administration had maintained for months the distance of the incipient administration of Mr. Al-Shara. Some US officials have expressed a deep skepticism or the reasons for Mr. Al-Shara and their promises to protect religious minorities, pointing out their Islamist orientation and history with Al Qaeda.
The US administration had also issued demands related to counterterrorism and other issues that, according to him, must be for the relief of sanctions to be consulted. The Syrian government has said that some of the demands, such as the prohibition of foreign combatants in the Government of Syria and the Armed Forces, must be negotiated. But at the same time, he has made movements to meet other demands.
Syria recently brought a team of Forensic experts from Qatar to look for the remains of Americans killed by the Islamic State.
And Syrian officials have told US intermediaries who have tried to avoid conflicts with all neighboring countries, including Israel, and welcomed US investment.
For months, regional and European leaders had struggled to get the attention of the Trump administration on the issue of sanctions. But the tide had begun to change recently. Mr. Trump hinted before his journey from the Middle East that would reconsider the problem.
Last week, the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, offered a diplomatic impulse to Mr. Al-Shara, as the first European leader to receive the Syrian President in his capital, gradually promising to raise the sanctions of the European Union against Syria that the new leaders keep the country in a course towards stability.
“I told the Syrian president that if I continued on his way, constantly in ours,” Macron said.
Eric Schmitt Washington contributed reports.
