Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem was in Oman on Thursday in his first visit to a Persian Gulf Arab country since the beginning of the civil war in 2011, according to Syrian media.
The Syrian Al-Watan daily said Walid Muallem arrived in the Omani capital Muscat “for his first visit to an Arab state in nearly four years, at the official invitation of his Omani counterpart Yussef bin Alawi,” Middle East Eye reported. The publication also wrote of a potential meeting in Muscat between top diplomats from Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
Muallem traveled from Tehran, where he met with high-level Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani. The Syrian minister also met with Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and special representative to the Middle East.
Muallem’s visit to Tehran coincided with Iran’s announcement of a new peace plan to put an end to Syria’s four-year conflict, which has killed more than 230,000 people.
According to Al Mayadeen television, the peace plan proposes “an immediate ceasefire in Syria, the formation of a national unity government, the amendment of the Constitution ... to guarantee rights for ethnic and religious minorities and for elections supervised by international observers.”
