Syria de facto leader al-Sharaa meets Christian clerics

Meeting comes as new authorities seek to reassure minorities of their safety in post-Assad Syria.

Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa met senior Christian clerics on Tuesday, amid calls for the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to guarantee minority rights after seizing power earlier this month.

“The leader of the new Syrian administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, meets a delegation from the Christian community in Damascus,” Syria’s General Command said in a statement on Telegram.

The statement included pictures of the meeting with Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican clerics.

Earlier Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called for an inclusive political transition in Syria that guarantees the rights of the country’s diverse communities.

He expressed hope that “Syrians could take back control of their own destiny“.

But for this to happen, the country needs “a political transition in Syria that includes all communities in their diversity, that upholds the most basic rights and fundamental freedoms,” Barrot said during a visit to Lebanon with Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu.

Barrot and Lecornu also met Lebanon’s army chief Joseph Aoun and visited United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the southern border, where a fragile truce ended intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in late November.

‘Positive’ talks with SDF

Since seizing power, Syria’s new leadership, headed by al-Sharaa, who was previously a member of al-Qaeda, has repeatedly tried to reassure minorities that they will not be harmed, although some isolated incidents have sparked protests.

On December 25, thousands protested in several areas of Syria after a video circulated showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the country’s north.

A day earlier, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus to protest against the burning of a Christmas tree near Hama in central Syria.

Before the civil war erupted in 2011, Syria was home to about one million Christians, according to analyst Fabrice Balanche, who says their number has dwindled to about 300,000.

Earlier, a Syrian official told the AFP news agency that al-Sharaa held “positive” talks with delegates of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Monday.

The talks were al-Sharaa’s first with SDF commanders since his rebels overthrew longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in early December and come as the SDF is locked in fighting with Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria.

The United States-backed SDF spearheaded the military campaign that pushed ISIL (ISIS) fighters from their last territory in Syria in 2019.

But Turkiye, which has long had ties with al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, says that the SDF is led by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a four-decade rebellion against the Turkish state, and is branded a “terrorist” group in Turkiye and the US.

On Sunday, al-Sharaa told Al Arabiya television that the SDF should be integrated into the new national army.

“Weapons must be in the hands of the state alone. Whoever is armed and qualified to join the defence ministry, we will welcome them,” he said.