United States President Donald Trump is to host Syria’s interim leader for talks this month in what would mark the first visit by a Syrian president to the US capital.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said in a speech on Sunday that the visit will help open a “new chapter” in relations between Damascus and Washington.

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“President Ahmed al-Sharaa will be at the White House at the start of November,” al-Shaibani said in the speech in Bahrain. “Of course, this is a historic visit. It is the first visit by a Syrian president to the White House in more than 80 years.

“There will be many issues on the table, starting with the lifting of sanctions and opening of a new chapter between the United States and Syria. We want to establish a very strong partnership between the two countries.”

Earlier, the US news website Axios quoted Tom Barrack, the US envoy to Syria, as saying al-Sharaa is expected to sign an agreement to join an international US-led alliance against the ISIL (ISIS) group during his visit.

Meeting with Trump

Al-Sharaa, who seized power from Bashar al-Assad in December, has been seeking to re-establish Syria’s ties with world powers that had shunned Damascus during al-Assad’s rule.

He met Trump in Saudi Arabia in May in what was the first encounter between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years.

The meeting, on the sidelines of Trump’s get-together with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, was seen as a major turn of events for a Syria that is still adjusting to life after the more than 50-year rule of the al-Assad family.

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Al-Sharaa also addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September.

He once led Syria’s offshoot of al-Qaeda. A decade ago, his anti-Assad group broke away from the network and later clashed with ISIL. Al-Sharaa also once had a $10m US reward on his head.

Syria’s president had joined fighters battling US forces in Iraq before entering the Syrian war. He was even imprisoned by US forces there for several years.

The US-led coalition and its local partners drove ISIL from its last stronghold in Syria in 2019.

Al-Sharaa’s planned visit to Washington, DC, comes as Trump is urging Middle East allies to seize the moment to build a durable peace in the volatile region after Israel and Hamas last month began implementing a ceasefire and captives exchange. That agreement aims to bring about a permanent end to Israel’s two-year war in Gaza.

The fragile ceasefire continues to hold, but the situation remains precarious.

Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli air strikes on its territory and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.