BEIRUT (Dispatches) — Senior Arab lawmakers were in Syria on Sunday for talks with President Bashar Assad on bringing his country back into the fold of the Arab world. The visit follows a mini-summit in Baghdad that affirmed the Arab League’s intentions of having Syria return to the organization.
Lawmakers from nine Arab countries, as well as Palestinian representatives, made up the delegation — reflecting a continuation in the thawing of relations with President Assad, who for over a decade has been isolated from most of the region under the U.S. and Israeli pressure.
Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 after the West and its allies in the Middle East launched a destructive war on Syria. The conflict has killed over 300,000 people and displaced half the country’s population of 23 million.
First to arrive in Damascus was Egypt’s Parliament Speaker Hanafy el-Gebaly, the most senior Egyptian official to visit Syria in over a decade. Iraq’s parliament speaker, Muhammad Halbousi — among several Arab leaders who have been calling for Syria’s return to the Arab League — headed the delegation.
On Saturday, the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union met in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, after several Arab countries in recent years moved to reestablish ties with Syria.
The process intensified following the massive Feb. 6 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria and killed more than 50,000 people.