Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighbourly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, Reuters/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighbourly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria's ousted President Bashar al-Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel - a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist rebels captured the capital Damascus.
Syria's new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Reporting by Jana Choukeir
Saudi Arabia and Syria signed a cooperation agreement between the two countries' defense ministries on Wednesday, Saudi state news agency SPA reported, as Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group continues its missile and drone attacks on the kingdom.
Ankara rejected on Wednesday what it called the "prejudiced and unfair" stance of the European Union towards fundamental rights and the judiciary in Turkey, and regarding Cyprus, contained in the bloc's report on EU membership candidates.
Turkey's parliament is set on Wednesday to ratify a defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that includes a collective defence clause, committing NATO's second-largest army to Riyadh's defence as it faces attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis.
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