The acting president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, will visit Paris on Wednesday for interviews with President Emmanuel Macron, his first trip to Europe since his entry into office in January and a possible opening to broader links with Western countries.
Al-Sharaa took power after his Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), led a lightning offensive that overthrew the former longtime president Bashar al-Assad in December.
Al-Assad, a member of the Alaouite minority in Syria, ruled for more than two decades and fled to Russia after being overthrown.
The Élysée Palais declared that Macron would reformulate France's support for “a free, stable sovereign Syria and which respects all the components of his society”, while stressing the importance of regional stability and the fight against terrorism.
The visit comes in the middle of the renewed sectarian effusions, coming a week after the clashes between the faithful forces in Al-Sharaa and the combatants of the Druze minority sect which left nearly 100 dead.
This followed the previous violence in the coastal region of Syria between Sunni armed men and the members of the minority sect to which Al-Assad belongs. That fighting left more than 1,000 people dead, many allawite civilians have killed in revenge attacks.
Religious minorities in Syria, including Alawites, Christians and Druze, fear the persecution under the predominantly government of Sunni Muslims. Al-Sharaa has repeatedly promised that all Syrians will also be treated, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
The 14-year-old civil war killed almost half a million people and moved millions. Syrian infrastructure lies in international ruins and sanctions remain a major obstacle to reconstruction.
The visit to Paris is closely as a potential test of Europe's desire to engage with the new management of Syria.
The Trump administration has not yet officially recognized the new Syrian government led by Al-Sharaa and HTS remains a terrorist organization designated by the United States.
The sanctions imposed in Damascus under Assad remain in place. However, Washington attenuated certain restrictions in January when the Treasury issued a general license, valid for six months, authorizing certain transactions with the Syrian government, including energy sales and accessory transfers.
The European Union began to mitigate sanctions, to suspend measures targeting the oil, gas and electricity sectors of Syria, as well as transport and bank restrictions.
At the end of April, the British government announced that it was making sanctions on a dozen Syrian entities, including government services and the media managed by the state.
