Pedersen met Ahmed al-Sharaa, leader of the Islamist movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani, in Damascus on Sunday evening.
Before the meeting, the UN diplomat announced that he hopes the Western world can lift the sanctions against Syria, so that the country can be rebuilt.
Hopefully, there will be a quick end to the sanctions, so we can see a joint effort to rebuild Syria, said Pedersen upon arrival in Damascus.
The envoy added, however, that it assumes that the new government includes all Syrians. The war-torn country is home to many different ethnic groups. HTS has a jihadist origin and has previously been labeled as a terrorist organization by, among others, the USA.
We need to get the political process started, and it clearly needs to be led by the Syrians themselves, said Pedersen.
More than half a million people have been killed and millions of inhabitants have been forced to flee in the civil war that has raged since 2011. The Western world, including the USA and EU, imposed extensive sanctions against Syria, which largely isolated Bashar al-Assad's regime.
