Cairo. Egypt – The Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is planning to hold a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad towards the end of April, Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Cairo and Damascus are in the process of restoring diplomatic ties and the high-level meeting is expected to take place after the end of the holy month of Ramadan, the publication wrote quoting informed sources.
However, there has been no official confirmation from the Egyptian or Syrian authorities about the meeting. Also, the date and the place of the meeting were not mentioned.
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials, marking the first such visit in more than a decade. Neither the Egyptian nor Syrian authorities have yet to comment on the report.
On Saturday, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad in Cairo, a first since Syria’s civil war broke out over a decade ago.
The meeting came amid amplified Arab engagement with the Damascus government which has been politically isolated in the region since the start of the Syria war and was expelled from the Cairo-based Arab League in 2011 over its bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations.
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Mekdad’s visit to Cairo is the “first in more than 10 years” for a Syrian top diplomat and saw a closed door meeting between the two ministers followed by discussions between the two countries’ delegations, the Egyptian foreign ministry said.
Several Arab countries rushed to Syria’s aid after a February 6 earthquake killed tens of thousands in the war-torn country and neighboring Turkey.
At the time, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in an unprecedented show of support since Sisi took office in 2014.
The two country’s top diplomats also spoke over the phone in the aftermath of the quake.
Shoukry then visited Damascus and met Assad on February 27 in the first trip of its kind in more than a decade.
Discussions on Saturday focused on “supporting the Syrian people to restore (the country’s) unity and sovereignty over its whole territories”, the Egyptian ministry said in a statement.
Shoukry called for a “comprehensive political settlement to the Syrian crisis”, while reiterating Cairo’s backing for the United Nations special envoy’s efforts to resolve the conflict.
The two ministers also agreed “on intensifying channels of communication” between their countries, the statement said.
Unlike other Arab governments, Cairo never fully severed ties with Damascus after the war, but relations were downgraded.
But the aftermath of the quake saw heavyweights like Saudi Arabia send aid to Syria, followed by talks between Riyadh and Damascus to resume consular services.
The United Arab Emirates has led the charge to bring Syria back into the Arab fold, with President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan saying last month that “the time has come” for Syria to be reintegrated into the wider region.