����ֱ��

NEW YORK: Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa renewed his call on Monday for Washington to formally lift US sanctions imposed under the 2019 Caesar Act while visiting New York to attend the first UN General Assembly of a Syrian leader in nearly six decades.

Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda leader, led rebel forces that overthrew Bashar Assad’s government last year. US President Donald Trump met him in Riyadh in May and ordered most sanctions lifted but the Caesar Syria Civil Protection Act of 2019 authorizing them remains US law.

Speaking at a summit on the sidelines of the annual General Assembly, Sharaa said the sanctions imposed on the previous Syrian leadership were no longer justified and were increasingly seen by Syrians as measures targeting them directly.

“We have a big mission to build the economy,” Sharaa said.

“Syria has a diverse workforce. They love to work, it’s in its genes. So don’t be worried, just lift the sanctions and you will see the results.”

Sharaa, the first Syrian president to participate in the General Assembly since 1967, is expected to deliver his first address at the General Assembly, which opens its 80th session on Tuesday.

Members of Congress have been debating whether to repeal the Caesar Act, which imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Syria under Assad. Some lawmakers, including Trump’s fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, want its repeal to be included as an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act, a sweeping defense bill expected to pass by the end of December.

FROM BATTLEFIELD TO DIALOGUE

Washington has separately been pressuring Syria to reach a security deal with Israel during the New York meetings this week, Reuters reported.

Israel and Syria remain formally in a state of war rooted in territorial disputes, military confrontations and deep-seated political mistrust.

Damascus hopes to secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.

Sharaa said those talks had reached an advanced stage and he hoped the outcome would preserve Syria’s sovereignty and address Israeli security concerns.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, told Axios he would support canceling sanctions against Syria if Sharaa’s government officially moved toward a new security deal with Israel and joined a coalition against the Islamic State extremist group.

Asked whether Syria could join the Abraham Accords that some Arab countries have signed to normalize relations with Israel, Sharaa said anger over Israel’s occupation of Syrian territory would influence the country’s position toward Israel.

“Israel must withdraw from Syrian land, and security concerns can be addressed in talks. The question is whether Israel’s concerns are truly about security or about expansionist designs — this is what the talks will reveal,” Sharaa said.

Sharaa, who as a militant leader had a $10 million US government bounty on his head, was interviewed in New York by retired General David Petraeus, who commanded US forces during the Iraq War, putting the two men on opposing sides as Sharaa joined the Sunni insurgency following the 2003 US invasion.

“It’s good that we were once in the battlefield zone and have now moved to another theater — that of dialogue,” Sharaa told Petraeus.

Syria remains deeply fractured after 13 years of civil war.

Sharaa said a deal with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, in control of the northeast of the country, was delayed.

Calls for decentralization by Kurdish parties were a step toward separation that risked igniting a wider war, he said. “This could present threats to Iraq, Turkiye and even Syria,” he added.

Sharaa later met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in New York and did not respond to a reporter asking if he was hopeful that the US would lift the sanctions.

CAIRO: At least 11 children were killed in a drone strike that hit a mosque in the besieged city of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the UN children’s agency said on Monday.
Local aid groups, activists, and the Sudanese army accused the Rapid Support Forces of launching the drone that struck the mosque during Fajr prayers early on Friday, killing at least 70 people.
UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell, in the Monday statement, called the attack “shocking and unconscionable.” 
Russell said initial reports indicated that at least 11 children between the ages of 6 and 15 were killed and “many more” were injured in the attack, which also damaged nearby homes.
The strike in the besieged city of El-Fasher destroyed the mosque, and many bodies were trapped under rubble, said a worker with the local aid group Emergency Response Rooms on Friday. 
The strike comes as the army and the RSF are fighting increasingly intense battles as part of the country’s ongoing civil war. 
The war has killed at least 40,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, displaced as many as 12 million others, and pushed many to the brink of famine.
Three doctors also died in the attack, according to the Preliminary Committee of Sudan’s Doctors Trade Union and Sudan Doctors Network. 
They were among 231 medical personnel killed since the war in Sudan broke out, according to Sudan Doctors Network.
“The latest attack has torn apart families and shattered any sense of safety for children who have already suffered so much,” said Russell, adding that the RSF’s siege of El-Fasher has trapped children who endure violence and have little access to food, clean water, and health care while being “forced to witness horrors no child should ever see.”
Antoine Gerard, Sudan deputy humanitarian coordinator with the UN, said on Monday that they were seeing more attacks on civilians now inside El-Fasher, who are also struggling to seek safety outside the city due to the siege and lack of safe routes.
“We are quite concerned about targeting civilians, targeting the population and particularly hospitals, mosques and schools, and any other civilian premises,” he said.
In a statement on Sunday, Egypt condemned the drone strike on the mosque. 
It said the attack “constitutes a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, denouncing the targeting of places of worship and innocent civilians in the conflict.”
Fighting over the control of El-Fasher and surrounding areas in North Darfur intensified by early April, and more than 400 civilians have been killed in RSF attacks in the region since April 10, according to a Friday report by the UN’s human rights office. 
The majority were killed in a major offensive that seized the nearby Zamzam displacement camp. 
The camp was turned into an RSF military base used to launch assaults on El-Fasher, according to the report.