Syria’s president Ahmed al-Sharaa cancels Berlin visit amid a ceasefire deal with Kurdish-led forces and discussions on Syrian repatriations. [Getty]
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has cancelled a planned visit to Berlin this week, a German government spokeswoman told AFP news agency on Sunday.
The visit scheduled for Tuesday, which had been due to focus on Germany’s efforts to step up the repatriation of Syrians, “was postponed by the Syrian side”, the spokeswoman said.
Sharaa on Sunday announced an agreement with the chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, that includes a ceasefire after government forces advanced into Kurdish-held areas of the north and east.
Sharaa said he would meet Abdi on Monday to finalise details of the agreement.
On what would have been his first visit to Germany since ousting Syria’s longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, Sharaa had been set to meet Chancellor Friedrich Merz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The former rebel chief has made frequent overseas trips, including to the United States and France, as he undergoes a rapid reinvention.
That has already led to a series of international sanctions on Syria have been lifted.
A German government spokesman said last week that Berlin had an “interest in deepening and finding a new start with the new Syrian government”.
The return of Syrians to their home country had been on the agenda, he said
.
Roughly one million Syrians have fled to Germany in recent years, many of them arriving in 2015-16 to escape the civil war.
Rights groups have criticised efforts to encourage them to return to Syria, citing continued instability and evidence of rights abuses.
Several NGOs, including those representing the Kurdish and Alawite Syrian communities in Germany, had called on Berlin to axe Sharaa’s planned visit, labelling it “totally unacceptable”.
