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President Trump said on Tuesday that he would raise US sanctions against Syria and throw an economic lifeline into a country that was destroyed by the Assad family by almost 14 years of civil war and decades.
Mr. Trump was to meet for the first time in Saudi Arabia in Saudi Arabia with the new President Syria’s Ahmed al-Shara, where the American leader makes the first big state visit to his second term. Mr. Al-Shara headed the rebel alliance that President Bashar al-Assad displaced in Syria in December.
The US President made the surprise announcement to end the sanctions when he spoke a business forum in the Saudi capital Riad, in which the crowd broke out and gave him ovation.
The decision represents a change of sea for Syria and breaks the economic border in a country as critical of the stability of the Middle East.
“There is a new government that hopefully succeeds in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,” said Trump. “We want to see that in Syria.”
Throughout Syria, people flocked to the streets of big cities to cheer the news from which they hope to alleviate the destructive poverty that is exposed to the majority of the population.
The Syrian Foreign Minister, Asaad Hassan Al-Shaibani, defeated the step as “fresh start on the way to reconstruction” and praised Saudi Arabia as “voice of reason and wisdom” in the region. He did not mention the United States directly.
Since the fall of Mr. Al-Assad, the Syrians have argued that the case of the regime should put an end to the sanctions.
“The sanctions were implemented in response to crimes of the previous regime against the people,” said Al-Shara in an interview in an interview last month.
Many of the sanctions were introduced in response to the brutal procedure of the Assad government against an uprising that began in 2011 and led to a civil war in which hundreds of thousands were killed.
Mr. Trump said he had made the decision after talking to the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who supported the anti-assadic uprising, and Crown Prince Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.
Mr. Trump tried to drum Saudi investments in the United States, and the Saudi prince said this week that he would increase the overall promise of Riyadh from Riad from 600 billion US dollars to 1 trillion US dollar.
“I will order the attitude of sanctions against Syria,” said Mr. Trump on Tuesday before huge projections from the United States and Saudi flags to an audience that sits under a massive chandelier. “Oh, what I was doing for the crown prince,” he added and pulled the enthusiastic amount of laughter.
Mr. Trump, who cultivated close diplomatic and business relationships with the kingdom, ended up in a wasteful reception in Riad. The Saudis triggered an honorary guard, a team of Arab horses and a lot of royals and managing directors to greet him.
The cozy relationships between Mr. Trump and the kingdom offered the golf leaders the opportunity to urge the lifting of sanctions against Syria, which many of them could see as critical of the economic collapse and prevent fresh conflicts that could spread beyond their limits.
“The Syrian economy is in pieces, but the region is available, if not desperate to get it back on its feet,” wrote Charles Lister, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “If we have cleared sanctions out of the way, Syria will be able to move into the world for the first time in decades to recover, reconstruction and reintegration into the world.”
In the Syrian capital Damascus, thousands of night owls gathered on the central Umayyad square and blew Syrian and Saudi flags while firing. Some sang revolutionary slogans against Mr. al-Assad. And they joy that their country can soon be integrated and rebuilt into the global financial system.
“Things are getting cheaper,” said Intisar al-Moussa, 49, an employee of the local government. “We will be able to buy our children the things they want and give them good training. We will be like other countries.”
With her sister, her brother, her mother and other relatives, she came to the square to celebrate and said that the announcement had changed her idea from Mr. Trump.
“We didn’t like Trump very much before, but now we love him because he was standing with us,” she said.
She also had another wish: “We hope that our salaries will rise a little.”
The crowds also celebrated in the big cities of Homs and Aleppo.
It was not yet clear how extensive a meeting of the US President could have with Mr. Al-Shara on Wednesday. An official of the White House said that Mr. Trump was agreed to “say hello” to the Syrian leader, while both were in Saudi Arabia, said the press pool, who traveled with the US President.
In his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Trump scolded Iran, one of the main allies of the repressed Assad dictatorship. He called the land “the largest and destructive” power that threatened the stability and prosperity of the Middle East, and swore that it would never have a nuclear weapon.
If Mr. Al-Shara gets a personal meeting with Mr. Trump, he will have the rare opportunity to bring a global guide to the future of Syria drastically. It would also be a breathtaking turn for the man who once led a branch of Al -Qaida before broke the relationships with the Jihadist group to moderate his image to gain a broader traction.
In the months since a rebel coalition that has been checked by Damascus and overthrew Mr. Al-Assad, the United States kept a multi-layered sanction regime on the spot that pushed the country to the brink of economic collapse with the war.
Critics of US sanctions argued that the lifting of an increase could enable international help and investments to help the country recover from the war.
The European leaders who promote stability and prevent new waves of migration on their shores have also pushed for more economic commitment.
However, when Europe had lifted some sanctions, only a few companies or regional governments were ready to invest in the country in the country under the burden of the US sanctions – and without knowing whether it would increase Mr. Trump’s anger.
The Trump government had held by the young government of Mr. Al-Shara for months. Some US officials expressed deeply skepticism about the motives of Mr. Al-Shara and his promises to protect religious minorities and point out his Islamist orientation and history with al-Qaida.
The American government also raised demands in connection with fighting terrorism and other questions that they said they had to be met for the consideration of sanctions. The Syrian government has declared that some of the demands, such as a ban on foreign fighters in the Syrian government and the armed forces, have to be negotiated. At the same time, it has undertaken movements to meet other requirements.
Syria recently brought a team of forensic experts from Qatar to search for the remains of the Americans killed by the Islamic State.
And Syrian officials have informed the American agents that they tried to avoid conflicts with all neighboring countries, including Israel, and welcomed American investments.
For months, the regional and European leaders had had to attract the attention of the trump government’s attention to the problem of sanctions. But the flood had started lately. Before his exit in the Middle East, Mr. Trump indicated that he would rethink the problem.
Last week, France President Emmanuel Macron offered Mr. Al-Shara a diplomatic thrust that was the first European leader of the Syrian President in his capital, and vowed to raise the sanctions of the European Union in Syria, provided that the new guides keep the country on a course towards stability.
“I told the Syrian president that we would continue if he followed his way,” said Macron.
Eric Schmitt Contribution to reporting from Washington.