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Trump to meet Syrian leader
Cape Times
|May 15, 2025
DONALD Trump was set to become the first US president in 25 years to meet a Syrian leader yesterday after he offered sanctions relief in hopes of offering a new path to the war-battered country.
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Trump, in Riyadh on the first state visit of his second term, will meet with Ahmed al-Sharaa, an erstwhile Islamist guerrilla turned interim president following the overthrow in December of strongman Bashar al-Assad.
No US president has met a Syrian leader since Bill Clinton saw Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, in Geneva in 2000 in a failed effort to persuade him to make peace with Israel.
Trump announced that he was lifting Assad-era sanctions on Syria in response to demands from Sharaa’s allies in Turkiye and Saudi Arabia.
“I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness,” Trump said in a speech to rapturous applause from a crowd including Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
This story is from the May 15, 2025 edition of Cape Times.
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