Daily Times

Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior U.S. diplomat said Friday, following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism.

Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by United States diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war.

The lightning offensive that toppled president Bashar al-Assad on December 8 was led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch but has sought to moderate its image in recent years. Leaf’s meeting with HTS chief Sharaa came despite Washington’s six-year-old designation of his group as a terrorist organisation.

“Based on our discussion, I told him we would not be pursuing the Rewards for Justice reward offer,” Leaf told reporters.

After their talks, “it’s a little incoherent, then, to have a bounty on the guy’s head,” she said, welcoming the messages from him.

“We will be looking for progress on these principles and actions, not just words,” she said.

After the meeting, a statement from Syria’s new leaders said they wanted to contribute to regional peace.

“The Syrian people stand at an equal distance from all countries and parties in the region… Syria rejects any polarisation,” the statement said.

Leaf said she told Sharaa of the “critical need to ensure terrorist groups cannot pose a threat inside of Syria or externally, including to the US and our partners in the region.”

“Ahmed al-Sharaa committed to this,” she said.

The US delegation also included Roger Carstens, the US pointman on hostages. He said he worked on Friday with the new Syrian leadership to search a location where American journalist Austin Tice could have been held, and “we’ll be working with the interim authorities” to examine other locations.

Tice was kidnapped in Syria in August 2012.

On a regional tour prior to the Aqaba talks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken had stressed the need to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State group (IS) jihadists.

The US military said on Friday its forces had killed an IS leader and another operative in Deir Ezzor province, part of escalated US military action against the group since Assad’s overthrow. The US embassy said Leaf also met with Syria’s White Helmet rescuers, civil society leaders, activists and others “to hear directly from them about their vision for the future of their country”.