ALBAWABA - According to a statement by the Government Media Office in Baghdad, Iraq's Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani left for Damascus, marking the first visit by an Iraqi official to Syria in 13 years.
Al-Sudani is expected to cover a number of important common issues between the two nations. An Iraqi official stated that: "al-Sudani will be tackling the Iraqi-Syrian border file, stopping the infiltration of militants and drug and captagon smuggling networks from the Syrian side to Iraq, and the urgency to activate joint cooperation on security and intelligence between Baghdad and Damascus".
The visit comes as Iraq, along with other Arab countries and the Gulf, has recently supported Syria's readmission into the Arab League, which suspended Damascus' membership following the outbreak of the country's civil conflict in 2011. Syria's membership resumed in early May.
Iraqi-Syrian Relations
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad visited Iraq earlier in June, meeting his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein and the Iraqi Prime Minister and President.
Mekdad stated: "Baghdad supports the path of civil peace in Syria and all negotiations that go into the matter". He added: "Iraq and Syria seek to strengthen bilateral efforts to control shared borders among other important matters".
Syrian Crisis
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group with a network of sources on the ground, had documented the deaths of 503,064 people by March 2023. It said at least 162,390 civilians had been killed, with the Syrian government and its allies responsible for 139,609 of those deaths, BBC reported.
