David Lammy’s remarks come a day after his US counterpart confirmed contact with HTS [Getty]
Britain’s foreign minister said Sunday that London had established diplomatic contact with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group in Syria, which led the offensive that ousted Bashar al-Assad.
They remain “a proscribed terrorist organisation, but we can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact, as you would expect”, said Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Lammy’s remarks come a day after his US counterpart Antony Blinken confirmed on Saturday that Washington has made contact with the rebel group.
“We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken told reporters after talks on Syria in the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba.
He did not give details on how the contact took place but when asked if the United States reached out directly, he said: “Direct contact — yes.”
Blinken said that the contact was partly related to the search for Austin Tice, the US journalist who was kidnapped in 2012 near the start of the brutal civil war.
