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United Nations, New York — Turning the page on decades of distance, Syria’s president addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, marking the first time any president from his country has done so in almost 60 years. As he spoke, hundreds of people gathered in front of giant screens in Syrian cities and towns to witness the speech while waving the country’s flags.

After six decades of dictatorship that killed 1 million people and tortured hundreds of thousands, “Syria is reclaiming its rightful place among the nations of the world,” Ahmad al-Sharaa told the international community.

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Al-Sharaa became the first Syrian head of state to speak at the United Nations since Noureddine Attasi gave a speech in 1967 shortly after the Arab-Israeli war, during which Damascus lost control of the Golan Heights. Israel annexed it in 1981.

Since the Assad family came to power in Syria in 1970 in a bloodless coup that overthrew Attasi, relations with the United States have been mostly cold, as Damascus was an ally of the former Soviet Union. Over the past decades, Syrian foreign ministers represented the country at the U.N. General Assembly.

An appearance after the collapse of the Assad family’s regime

The Assad family dynasty’s autocratic, repressive 54-year rule abruptly collapsed in December, when then-President Bashar Assad was ousted in a lightning insurgent offensive led by al-Sharaa. Assad’s fall marked a major shift in the 14-year civil war.

Al-Sharaa blasted Israel in his speech, saying that it did not stop its threats to his country since Assad’s fall and adding that its policies “contradict with the international community’s support to Syria and its people” and endanger the region.

Negotiations have been ongoing for a security deal that al-Sharaa has said he hopes will bring about a withdrawal of Israeli forces and return to a 1974 disengagement agreement. While al-Sharaa said last week that a deal could be reached in a matter of days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday appeared to downplay the odds of a breakthrough.

Later Wednesday, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that negotiations are underway, adding that their conclusion “involves ensuring Israel’s interests, which include, among other things, the demilitarization of southwestern Syria and maintaining the safety and security” of the Druze religious minority in the country.

Since assuming power, al-Sharaa has preached coexistence and sought to reassure Syria’s minority communities, but the country has been threatened by outbreaks of sectarian violence that left hundreds dead earlier this year. Gunmen affiliated with the new government were also accused of atrocities against civilians from the Druze and Alawite religious minorities in southern Syria’s Sweida province and the coastal region.

Al-Sharaa said in his speech that the Syrian state has worked on forming fact-finding missions and gave the United Nations the right to investigate the killings.

“I promise to bring anyone whose hands are tainted with the blood of Syrian people to justice,” he added.

The fight against drugs has progressed

Al-Sharaa said Syria’s new authorities have destroyed the drug business that Assad used to fund his government as it was under harsh Western sanctions that, along with the war, paralyzed the economy. Assad’s fall revealed industrial-scale manufacturing facilities of the amphetamine-like stimulant Captagon, also known as fenethylline, which experts say fed a $10 billion annual global trade in the highly addictive drug.

Over the past months, Syrian authorities have closed Captagon factories in different parts of Syria part of their campaign to end the illegal trade.

Al-Sharaa urged Western countries to lift the Assad-era sanctions “so that they are not a tool to shackle the Syrian people.”

U.S. President Donald Trump met with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May and announced that he would lift decades of sanctions. He followed through by ordering a large swath of them lifted or waived.

However, the most stringent sanctions were imposed by Congress in 2019 and will require a congressional vote to permanently remove them.

Speaking to reporters outside the U.N. after his speech, al-Sharaa said that he hopes that the sanctions would eventually be lifted.

“Syria does not wish the pain it passed through for anyone” and feels “the suffering of war and destruction,” al-Sharaa said, expressing support for Palestinians in Gaza amid Israel’s war there.

Syrian divisions manifest in New York

In Damascus, cheering crowds gathered in the central Umayyad Square to celebrate al-Sharaa’s speech. At Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza near the U.N., members of the Syrian diaspora faced off in dueling demonstrations, one in support of the new authorities in Damascus and one against.

Pro-government demonstrators hoisted the three-starred “revolution flag” that has now become the official flag of Syria. On the other side, many lifted the five-color Druze flag. Some shouted and cursed at each other across the barricades.

On the Druze side, Farah Taki, originally from Sweida, said her aunts there were displaced by the recent violence and she had come from Chicago to protest al-Sharaa’s visit.

“It’s disgrace that New York is welcoming an ex-Qaida member at the U.N., and allowing him even to speak,” she said. The insurgent group that al-Sharaa formerly led was once affiliated with al-Qaida but later cut ties.

On the other side of the barricades, Dina Keenawari, a Syrian American originally from Damascus, had come from Florida to show her support for al-Sharaa.

“We’ve lived under tyranny for the past 50 years, and now we’re turning a new chapter, and we’re looking forward,” she said. “And we’re proud of him.”

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