ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - US President Donald Trump said late Sunday that Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa may visit Washington soon. It would be the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to the White House.
"He may be coming. I don't know. I mean, he's working very hard. We took sanctions off of Syria to give them a chance at survival and I hear he's doing a very good job," Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday while flying from Florida to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
During a visit to Bahrain earlier in the day, Syria's top diplomat confirmed Sharaa's visit to Washington.
“President Ahmed al-Sharaa will be at the White House at the start of November,” Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue Conference, describing the visit as "historic".
"It is the first visit by a Syrian president to the White House in more than 80 years," Shaibani said, adding it will help open a “new chapter” in relations between Damascus and Washington.
The meeting is expected to take place on November 10, according to the Washington Post.
Shaibani added that a range of topics will be addressed during Sharaa's visit to Washington.
“There will be many issues on the table, starting with the lifting of sanctions and opening of a new chapter between the United States and Syria. We want to establish a very strong partnership between the two countries," he said.
For his part, US Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack told reporters at the Manama conference on Saturday that Sharaa is expected to sign a deal during his expected visit to Washington to join the US-led coalition against ISIS.
Sharaa, who seized power from Bashar al-Assad in December last year, and was appointed interim president in late January, has been re-establishing ties with the international community ever since.
Trump and Sharaa met in Saudi Arabia in May, a meeting seen as a major diplomatic boost for the interim Syrian government. The Syrian president addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September.