EU ministers to take up easing of Syria sanctions on January 27

RIYADH: European foreign ministers will meet at the end of January to discuss the lifting of sanctions on Syria, the EU foreign policy chief said Sunday in Riyadh ahead of a meeting of top Middle Eastern and Western diplomats and Syria's new foreign minister.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, said the foreign ministers would convene in Brussels on January 27 in an effort to decide how the 27-nation bloc would relax sanctions on Syria. After 13 years of civil war, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad was ousted in a lightning offensive by insurgent forces led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham a month ago. The group has since set up a caretaker government in Damascus.

Any European decision to ease sanctions would be conditional on the new Syrian administration's approach to governing, which must include "different groups" and women and "no radicalisation", Kallas said, without elaborating. "If we see the developments going to the right direction, we are ready to do the next steps...If we see that it's not going to the right direction, then we can also move back on this."


Sunday's conference, the first such meeting of Western and regional leaders hosted by regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia since Assad's ouster, comes as Damascus urges the West to lift sanctions to help global funding flow more freely.

In a press conference held after wrapping up the conference, Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said he stressed "lifting the unilateral and UN sanctions imposed on Syria as continuing ... sanctions will hinder the aspirations of the Syrian people to achieve development."

The US, UK, the EU and others imposed tough sanctions on Syria after a crackdown by Assad on pro-democracy protests in 2011 that spiralled into civil war.