Egyptian Foreign Minister meets Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, promises more aid following earthquake
Egypt’s Foreign Minister met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Monday and promised to provide more aid to the quake-hit country.
Sameh Shoukry is the highest ranking Egyptian official to visit Syria since 2011, a day after Cairo parliament speaker Hanafy el-Gebaly and a delegation of senior Arab lawmakers visited Assad in a bid to end to the political isolation of Syria.
Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 after Assad’s government brutally suppressed mass protests against his rule – an uprising that quickly escalated into a brutal civil war. The conflict has killed more than 300,000 people and displaced half of the country’s 23 million people.
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Although several Arab countries have begun to rekindle ties with Assad in recent years, the process intensified after this month’s massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria and killed more than 47,000 people, including more than 1,400 people in areas controlled by the government of Syria and more than 2,400 in the rebel-held northwest. The earthquake further aggravated the war-torn country’s deep economic crisis.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, left, meets with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Damascus, Syria, February 27, 2023. (Syrian Presidency Facebook page via AP)
Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are among U.S. allies in the Middle East that have provided earthquake aid to government-controlled areas in Syria. The United Arab Emirates has sent more planes loaded with aid than any other country, including Syria’s main allies Russia and Iran.
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Shoukry told the media after meeting Assad and his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad, that Egypt had so far sent 1,500 tonnes of humanitarian aid.
“We will continue to provide all the humanitarian aid we can,” Shoukry said. Asked why Cairo has yet to normalize relations with Damascus, he responded by saying his visit was “first and foremost humanitarian”.
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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi spoke by phone with Assad less than 48 hours after the earthquake, the first time the two had spoken in more than a decade. For years, many Egyptian public figures have called on el-Sissi’s government to strengthen relations with Syria. Shoukry also pushed for Damascus’ return to the Cairo-based Arab League.
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