00:00And what's your message to the international community, in particular to people who are considering investing in Syria?
00:06What do you say to them?
00:07I think, you know, the meeting that we have with Brian Mast, the congressman and President al-Shara, if you remember a couple of weeks ago,
00:18that meeting was initially with business people.
00:22We invited business delegation to Syria.
00:24We went with the business delegation to Syria, private equities from the United States.
00:30And we went to Syria to see and to explore opportunities.
00:35And we found, you know, we found a lot of opportunities in Syria.
00:39We sat down with the government, with the Syrian government, with the SSF, the Syrian Souverainty Fund.
00:45And we talked to them about what kind of opportunities we can have, that American companies can have.
00:50We went with oil and gas companies.
00:53We went with construction companies.
00:56We went with, you know, rare earth kind of phosphate and all of that.
01:02So we talked to the Syrian government about the opportunities.
01:07And we found actually a lot of opportunities in Syria.
01:10We think, you know, the Caesar Act, when it's lifted, and that's what, you know, this delegation, the business delegation,
01:17when they met with Brian Mast, they told him.
01:20They told him about the opportunities in Syria, about how the Syrian people actually are trying to live their lives,
01:28and they want just to rebuild their country.
01:31They don't want anything else.
01:32They don't want to be a threat, you know, to anyone else in the region.
01:36They just want to reconstruct and rebuild the country.
01:40They talked to him about, you know, the banking system and how the Caesar Act, for example, you know, affect the banking system in Syria.
01:50Syrian banks now, you know, after lifting the Caesar Act, they can start reconnecting, even partially, you know, to the correspondent banks.
02:00Money transfers from abroad become much cheaper, become much easier to Syria.
02:08So, and that actually will start to create jobs in Syria.
02:12It will start to have, you know, Syrian people will start to have some income.
02:16And this could be visible within months.
02:18Like, you know, actually, Caesar Act froze construction, energy, transport, manufacturing, all of that.
02:26So they talked to Brian Mass about that, and he started to think about, you know, now the American businessmen, they want to go to Syria to invest.
02:36They want to have some opportunities, and that would help the country, the Syrian country, to have a better future.
02:44It will also help the American companies, you know, to have more opportunities and make more investments in Syria.
02:51And that kind of common interest, you know, between Syria and the United States.
02:57And that's what we want to have, a common interest that actually engage, you know, Syrian government with the American investments much more.
03:08And that will lead to more stability in Syria.
03:11It will lead to more, a better future.
03:14It will help the country to stabilize and prevent any kind of, even, I would say, you know, bringing investments to Syria.
03:23It's not only going to help the stabilization of the country.
03:28It will prevent Syria from going back.
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