Returning to Arab fold, Assad invited to UAE-hosted climate summit

Returning to Arab fold, Assad invited to UAE-hosted climate summit

DUBAI: Syria’s embattled President Bashar Assad received an invitation to attend the upcoming COP28 climate talks in Dubai later this year, even as the yearslong war in his country over his rule grinds on.

Assad’s invite, late on Monday, to the climate talks comes as the Syrian president already is scheduled to attend the Arab League summit this Friday in Jeddah, years after being frozen out of regional politics.

A brutal crackdown by Assad’s government on demonstrators in a 2011 Arab Spring uprising challenging his rule descended into a civil war and consequently became a regional conflict. The war has killed half a million people and displaced half of its population.

Assad’s invitation came in a letter from Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported.

The agency published images of Assad reading the letter alongside an Emirati diplomat in Damascus.

The UAE similarly had cut ties with Assad, only to slowly restore them in recent years.

Asked for comment, the Emirati office organizing the upcoming climate conference said in a statement that the event marked “a milestone opportunity for the world to come together, course correct, and drive progress toward keeping the goals and ambitions of the Paris Climate Agreement