Asked by reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain whether Sharaa would head to Washington this month, Tom Barrack said “yes”, adding that Sharaa would “hopefully” sign up to the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh.
It would be the Syrian leader’s first visit to Washington and his second visit to the US after a landmark UN trip in September where the former militant became the first Syrian president in decades to address the General Assembly in New York.
Formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was delisted as a terrorist group by Washington as recently as July.
Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their own radical past and present a moderate image more tolerable to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.
The United States had already been collaborating with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to fight Daesh in Syria.
