Foreign Ministers of Arab Countries Hold Meeting on Syrian Crisis in Amman, Jordan

A meeting was held in the Jordanian capital, Amman, today, Monday, for the foreign ministers of Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, to complement consultative meetings on the Syrian crisis.

The closed-door meeting was held with the participation of the Syrian Foreign Minister, Faisal Al-Miqdad, who is visiting Jordan for the first time since the start of his country’s crisis in 2011, according to Anadolu Agency.

In addition to Al-Miqdad, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Ayman Safadi, Egypt, Sameh Shukri, Iraq, Fouad Hussein, and Saudi Arabia, Faisal bin Farhan, participated in the meeting.

The meeting discussed the details of the contacts made by the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, in addition to Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, with the Syrian government, in order to present the Jordanian initiative, aimed at reaching a political solution to the Syrian crisis, in a way that paves the way for Syria’s return to the League of Arab States.

These are the first talks that bring together the Syrian government and a group of Arab countries since the decision to suspend Syria’s membership in the Arab League in 2011 after suppressing protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

Jordan called on Syria to participate with the Arab countries in drawing up a roadmap to end the conflict and address the issues of refugees, detainees, drug smuggling and Iranian-backed militias there, all of which are issues that affect neighboring countries.

Bilateral meeting

The Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Minister Ayman Safadi met his Syrian counterpart Faisal Al-Miqdad bilaterally before the broader meeting that included the foreign ministers of Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in Amman.

The meeting comes about 3 weeks before the Arab summit in Riyadh on May 19, 2023, and after two weeks of talks that took place in the Saudi city of Jeddah between the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, but they did not reach an agreement on Syria’s possible return to the Arab League.