Via Laura Rozen in substack.com: American diplomats, on their first visit to the Syrian capital in 12 years, met with a Syrian rebel leader in Damascus today, two weeks after his group ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. They said they were lifting a $10 million U.S. bounty on Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of Turkish-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and now Syria’s de facto interim ruler, after he committed to Syria not being a host for terrorist groups. “Based on our discussion, I told him we would not be pursuing the Rewards for Justice reward offer that has been in effect for some years,” Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf told journalists from Amman, Jordan today, after returning from Damascus with a delegation that included US hostage envoy Roger Carstens and senior State Department Syria advisor Daniel Rubinstein. “The US is committed to working with the Syria people to help seize this historic opportunity,” Leaf said of her meeting with al-Sharaa. “We also discussed the critical need to ensure terrorist groups cannot pose a threat inside of Syria or externally, including to the US and our partners in the region.”
