The meeting comes as the new authorities seek to reassure minorities of their safety in post-Assad Syria.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa met with senior Christian clerics on Tuesday amid calls for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader to guarantee minority rights after taking power earlier this month.
“The leader of the new Syrian administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, meets a delegation from the Christian community in Damascus,” the Syrian General Command said in a statement on Telegram.
The statement included photos of the meeting with Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican clergy.
Earlier on Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called for a comprehensive political transition in Syria that guarantees the rights of the country’s various communities.
He expressed hope that “Syrians can regain control of their destiny.”
But for that to happen, the country needs “a political transition in Syria that includes all communities in their diversity, that supports the most basic rights and fundamental freedoms,” Barrot said during a visit to Lebanon with Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu. .
Barrot and Lecornu also met with Lebanese army chief Joseph Aoun and visited United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the southern border, where a fragile ceasefire ended intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in late November.
‘Positive’ talks with SDF
Since taking power, Syria’s new leadership, headed by al-Sharaa, who was formerly a member of al-Qaeda, has repeatedly tried to reassure minorities that they will not be harmed, although a few isolated incidents have sparked protests .
On December 25, thousands protested in several areas of Syria after a video circulated showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the north of the country.
A day earlier, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus to protest the burning of a Christmas tree near Hama in central Syria.
Before civil war broke out in 2011, Syria was home to about a million Christians, according to analyst Fabrice Balanche, who says the number has dwindled to about 300,000.
Earlier, a Syrian official told AFP news agency that al-Sharaa held “positive” talks with delegates of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Monday.
The talks were al-Sharaa’s first with SDF commanders since his rebels overthrew longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in early December and come as the SDF has been embroiled in fighting with Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria.
The US-backed SDF led the military campaign that pushed ISIL (ISIS) fighters from their last territory in Syria in 2019.
But Turkiye, which has long had ties to al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, says the SDF is led by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a four-decade rebellion against the Turkish state. and has been called a “terrorist” group in Turkey and the US.
On Sunday, al-Sharaa told Al Arabiya television that the SDF should be integrated into the new national army.
“Weapons should only be in the hands of the state. Whoever is armed and qualified to join the defense ministry, we will welcome them,” he said.
