Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has held talks with Donald Trump at the White House, the first such official visit by a Syrian leader since national independence in 1946. Trump met the Syrian leader for the first time last May in Riyadh on the sidelines of a Gulf Cooperation Council summit. In September the ex-jihadist, who had been previously affiliated with al-Qaida, became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN general assembly in New York. The interior ministry said Syrian security forces carried out 61 raids, with 71 people arrested and explosives and weapons seized. While Israel and Syria remain formally in a state of war, with Israel still occupying Syria’s Golan Heights, Trump has expressed hope that the two countries can normalise relations.
