Paris: Paris will send four diplomats to Damascus on Tuesday for the first time after a 12-year severance of diplomatic relations with Syria.
According to the Acting French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, the diplomats’ goal will be “to restore France’s influence” in Syria, “to establish initial contacts with the new authorities” and “to assess the population’s humanitarian needs.”
France severed diplomatic relations with Syria in 2012. Barrot said that there were several hundred French citizens in Syria, and that Paris was interacting with the authorities in Syria through the Romanian embassy and its diplomatic mission in Beirut.
Paris previously welcomed the opposition’s seizure of power in Syria. Barrot described the new authorities in Syria as “encouraging” and “not abusive”, while he had previously also stated that France would support the Syrian opposition in the process of “political transition” “only if it takes into account the interests of all representatives of Syrian society”.
As former British Ambassador to Syria, Middle East expert Peter Ford previously told RIA Novosti, the West would use the rhetoric of the so-called “transition period” in Syria after the armed opposition had seized power due to the need to build favorable relations with the country’s new leadership. In his opinion, for Western powers, the prospect of doing business with gangs and warlords recognized as terrorist groups is a problem, but it can be circumvented by pretending that a “transition” has occurred.
Earlier, Le Figaro reported, citing Olivier Christin, prosecutor of the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office, that dozens of French jihadists from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) movement and the brigade of the French jihadist Omar Omsen took part in the armed opposition’s assault on Damascus. Among the rebels were militants convicted in France.
At the same time, as French media indicate, France is concerned about the presence of jihadists, especially French ones, on Syrian soil and the risk of exporting this threat to Europe.
The French Interior Ministry announced last week that it was working to suspend ongoing asylum cases from Syria. According to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA), there are currently about 45,000 Syrians in France who have been granted asylum in the country since 2011. In 2023, France registered almost 4,500 asylum applications from Syrian citizens, and another 2,500 since the beginning of 2024.
Syria’s armed opposition captured the Syrian capital of Damascus on December 8. Russian officials have said that Assad stepped down as president after holding negotiations with participants in the Syrian conflict and left Syria for Russia, where he was granted asylum. Mohammed al-Bashir, who ran an Idlib-based administration formed by HTS and other opposition groups, was named interim prime minister on December 10.
