Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, ASAAD Al-Shibani, is expected to raise the new flag of his country at the United Nations headquarters in New York when he would attend a briefing of the Security Council, the first public appearance of a senior high-ranking government official in the United States since the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad last December.
The three -star flag had been used by opposition groups during the country's civil conflict has now replaced the two -star flag from the Assad era as an official emblem of the country.
The new Damascus authorities have courted Washington in the hope of receiving severe sanctions alternatives which were imposed by the United States and its allies during the brutal repression of Al-Assad against antigan government demonstrations in 2011 and the civil war that followed.
A delegation of Syrian officials went to the United States this week to attend global banking and international monetary fund meetings in Washington and United Nations meetings in New York.
It was not clear if officials of the Trump administration would meet Al-Shibani during the visit.
The Trump administration has not yet officially recognized the current Syrian government, led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa, a former Islamist insurge: led the offensive that overthrew Assad.
Washington has also been sanctions against Syria in place, although it has brought temporary relief to certain restrictions.
The militant group led by Al-Sharaa, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, remains a terrorist organization designated by the United States.
Two republican members of the Congress, Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Cory Mills in Florida, arrived in Damascus last week during an unofficial visit organized by a non-profit organization of Syrian-American and met Al-Sharaa and other representatives of the government.
Mills said before meeting Al-Sharaa that “in the end, it would be the president's decision” to raise sanctions or not, although he said that “the congress can advise”.
Mills later told Bloomberg News that he had discussed the American conditions for the relief of sanctions with Al-Sharaa, in particular by guaranteeing the destruction of the chemical weapons left from the al-Assad era, by coordinating the fight against terrorism, by making a plan to face foreign activists who were fighting in parallel with the armed threat.
He also said that Al-Sharaa had declared that Syria could normalize relations with Israel “in the right conditions”, but did not specify what these conditions are.
Other Western countries have warmed up the new Syrian authorities more quickly. The British government raised sanctions against a dozen Syrian entities on Thursday, including ministries and media.
The European Union, on the other hand, began to relieve certain energy sanctions and banking transports and restrictions against Syria, suspended from the measures targeting oil, gas and electricity as well as transport, including the aviation sector.
