Lawmakers from nine Arab countries, as well as Palestinian representatives, were in the Syrian capital of Damascus for high-level talks with the country’s President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.
The visit follows a mini-summit in Baghdad that affirmed the Arab League’s intention to have Syria return to the organisation following the country’s devastating civil war.
The talks also reflect thawing relations with President Assad, who has been isolated from most of the region for over a decade.
Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 after Mr Assad’s government cracked down brutally on mass protests against his rule — an uprising that quickly descended into civil war.
The conflict has killed over 300,000 people and displaced half the country’s population of 23 million.
First to arrive in Damascus was Egyptian parliamentary speaker Hanafy el-Gebaly, the most senior official from that country to visit Syria in over a decade.
Iraq’s parliamentary speaker Mohammed Halbousi — among several Arab leaders who have been calling for Syria’s return to the Arab League — headed the delegation.
On Saturday, the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union met in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, after a few years of efforts by several Arab countries to re-establish ties with the Syrian regime.
The process intensified following the massive February 6 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, killing more than 47,000 people, including over 1,400 people in government-controlled areas of Syria and more than 2,400 in the rebel-held north-west.
Mr el-Gebaly told reporters that the Arab delegation was “visiting brotherly Syria to support the Syrian people” after the quake.
He cited the joint statement from the Baghdad meeting about the need to begin the process of “bringing Syria back to the Arab fold.”
“It’s natural that Syria will return some day, God willing, and matters will return to what they once were,” he said.
