00:00Syria's new leader will be among the world leaders gathering in New York for the U.N. General Assembly next week.
00:05Meanwhile, the country's foreign minister is heading to Washington today.
00:09It's the first such visit in more than 25 years.
00:11After an Islamist-led rebel alliance ousted Bashar al-Assad back in December,
00:15the U.S. has already lifted most sanctions it imposed on Syria.
00:19Now the Syrian government says it expects to finalize a security and military agreement with Israel by the end of the year.
00:25Just a reminder that Syria and Israel are technically at war, and a deal between them would be a dramatic breakthrough.
00:33Joining us from our International Affairs desk is Ketavan Gordastani.
00:36Hello to you, Ketavan.
00:37The first such visit in 25 years. Needless to say, this is quite significant, isn't it?
00:42It's very significant because it is a symbol, those 25 years.
00:47And it's also the latest step in Syria, sort of returning to the normal international community stage, if you will.
00:56Since overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, the new interim president has traveled.
01:02He has traveled to Europe.
01:03He's met with a lot of leaders, including with Donald Trump.
01:07You remember that historic handshake that took place in Saudi Arabia in May.
01:11And so this is that last step, and of course it will culminate with that speech in front of the U.N. General Assembly.
01:19Since that handshake with Donald Trump, there has been a lifting of sanctions from the United States.
01:25A lot of them have been lifted, but not all of them have been lifted.
01:29And so that is going to be one of the main goals of the foreign minister during his trip to Washington.
01:35He is set to go to Congress and meet with people there, with lawmakers, to try to get those still remaining sanctions to be lifted.
01:45But that's not the only goal.
01:47He's also there to update the Americans on how the negotiations with Israel are going,
01:54because those two things are sort of combined when it comes to how the Americans view it.
02:00And we're also wondering about how we're going to break down those two issues, starting with sanctions.
02:06Well, the sanctions, of course, this is something that the Syrians have been longing for for a long time.
02:13And the first sanctions were lifted by Donald Trump with an executive order back in late June.
02:20Most of those sanctions were related to sort of ending the isolation of Syria from the international financial system.
02:29The goal there was to allow Syria to start rebuilding its economy and start rebuilding concretely the country.
02:37And so that was the focus there.
02:39There was also another move by the United States during that time,
02:44which is lifting the terrorism designation for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,
02:50which HTS, which was the rebel group that was led by al-Shara in the past and that had ties to al-Qaeda.
02:57But there are still sanctions in place.
03:00One is that Syria officially still is designated by the United States as a state sponsor of terror.
03:07And so that could be something that they get from the Americans.
03:10The other thing is the Caesar Act, which was voted on by Congress in 2020.
03:15That was the general framework for all of the recent sanctions on Syria.
03:20And so, yes, the Trump administration has put exemptions on it over the past few months.
03:26But in order to make those lifting of sanctions permanent, you have to go through Congress.
03:32And that is why the foreign minister is meeting with senators on Capitol Hill to push for that Caesar Act to be voted on so that it can be revoked.
03:42But Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who is involved in that Caesar Act,
03:47has made it very clear that he has a couple of conditions in order to do that.
03:52One is for Syria to join the coalition against ISIS.
03:56The second one is to move towards a new security agreement with the Israelis.
04:02Yeah.
04:02And when we talk about an agreement between Israel and Syria, Damascus says they're closed.
04:07Do we have any idea if they really are?
04:09Well, look, they are very confident, the Syrians.
04:12The interim president, Al-Shara, on Wednesday told reporters that the negotiations could yield results, quote, in coming days.
04:22But he did insist also that Israel, in this case, needs to respect Syria's territorial integrity.
04:31A security deal for the Syrians would involve two main things.
04:36One, they want Israel to stop bombing Syria because we've seen over the past few months that the Israelis have carried out dozens of strikes, including one in central Damascus.
04:49The second thing is that they want the Israelis to move out of what was supposed to be a U.N.-controlled buffer zone.
04:56So what the Syrians are calling for is a return to sort of the agreement that was agreed on in 1974, where there is that buffer zone controlled by international forces.
05:09They are, however, not completely trusting in the Israelis.
05:13And that's where the Americans come into play.
05:16They're pushing the Americans to sort of get the Israelis on board.
05:20What is important here, the goal here, is to get a sort of stabilization with the Israelis.
05:27Al-Shara made it that very clear.
05:29First, a security agreement, maybe some other agreements in the coming months.
05:35But for now, at least, he has put aside completely the idea of normalizing relations with Israel.
05:42All right, Kadivin, thank you very much.
05:43Kadivin Gurdjastani, France 24's International Affairs Editor.
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