The Commander-in-Chief of the new administration in Syria, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, met with Farouk Al-Sharaa, who previously served as Vice President of the ousted regime of Bashar al-Assad until 2014.
According to what was reported by the French News Agency, Ahmed Al-Sharaa invited him to attend National dialogue conference It is scheduled to be held in the capital, Damascus, in the coming days.
Marwan Al-Sharaa, a cousin of Farouk Al-Sharaa, told Agence France-Presse in a telephone call: “Since the first days of Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s entry into Damascus, Farouk Al-Sharaa visited his place of residence in a suburb of Damascus, and extended an invitation to him to attend a national conference that will be held soon.”
Farouk Al-Sharaa (86 years old) has been marginalized since 2014, when he isolated himself in his home after being, for more than two decades, one of the most prominent pillars that shaped Syria’s foreign policy.
Farouk Al-Sharaa had served as Minister of Foreign Affairs starting in 1984, during the rule of Hafez al-Assad, and remained there when his son Bashar inherited power in 2000.
According to what his relative said, Farouk al-Sharaa was “under house arrest, and his driver and personal companion were imprisoned on charges of facilitating his attempt to defect (from Assad’s rule), and he was not allowed to leave Damascus throughout the past period.”
He continued: “My cousin is in good health and is currently preparing to publish a book about the entire period of Bashar’s rule from 2000 until now.”
Agence France-Presse notes that Farouk Al-Shara proposed, from the beginning of the revolution, to play the role of mediator, after he found himself in the middle of the limits of his loyalty to the existing regime, and his connection to his hometown of Daraa, where the spark of the revolution broke out on March 18, 2011, with the fall of the first two people killed in the revolution at the hands of the security services that The demonstrators were shot.
Farouk Al-Sharaa has been absent from the media and official meetings over the past years, except for rare times when he appeared at funeral gatherings or on a personal visit in photos that appeared to be leaked.
“Historic settlement”
Farouk Al-Sharaa previously said in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar in December 2012 that Al-Assad “does not hide his desire to resolve matters militarily until final victory is achieved.”
He added: “Not all opposition members can resolve the battle militarily, and what the security forces and army units are doing will not achieve a resolution.”
Farouk Al-Sharaa called for a “historic settlement” that includes regional countries and members of the UN Security Council.
Al-Sharaa was removed from the regional leadership of the Baath Party in July 2013.
After about 25 years in office, Bashar al-Assad’s rule ended at dawn on the eighth of this month after he fled to Russia, with the entry of opposition factions into Damascus after they successively took control of Syria’s largest cities.
Farouk Al-Sharaa commented on the developments in an interview with Al-Arabi TV following the fall of Al-Assad, welcoming the change that took place in Syria after what he described as long suffering.