AMMAN (Dispatches) –
Jordan has fully reopened its main border crossing with Syria as ties continue to improve between the two countries.
The Nasib-Jaber crossing was at one point a transit route for hundreds of trucks a day transporting goods between Europe and Turkey and the Persian Gulf.
The outbreak of war in 2011, however, saw the closure of the crossing, though it has been partially open since 2018.
Syria, which blames Western sanctions for its economic woes, hopes wider business links with its southern neighbor will help it recover from a devastating war and attract much-needed foreign currency.
“The aim of these understandings is to boost trade exchange between the two countries to achieve the interests of every party,” Jordan’s minister of industry and trade, Maha al-Ali, told state-owned Al Mamlaka television.
Officials in Jordan, a close U.S. ally, and Lebanon have urged Washington to ease sanctions on Syria to facilitate trade.
Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt - another close U.S. ally - this month reached an agreement for Egyptian natural gas to be sent to Lebanon via Syria using a pipeline built some 20 years ago in an Arab cooperation project.
Jordanian officials said a visiting trade delegation from Syria, led by economy, trade, agriculture, water and electricity ministers, would discuss lifting tariff barriers.
Businessmen from Jordan had largely shunned dealing with Syria after the 2019 Caesar Act - the toughest U.S. sanctions yet that prohibited foreign companies trading with Damascus.
Amman hopes cross-border trade and renewed transport links will help boost its debt-ridden economy, badly hit last year by the coronavirus pandemic.
Syria’s only normally operating frontier crossing has been with Lebanon, and in recent years Iraq after the reopening of the Qaim crossing in 2019.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has recovered most of Syria. Turkish forces are deployed in much of the north and northwest - the last terrorist bastion - and U.S. troops are stationed in the Kurdish-controlled east and northeast.
Jordan’s state airline, Royal Jordanian, will also soon resume direct flights to Damascus for the first time in nearly a decade.