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.
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 added.
