US preparing to issue some sanctions relief to Syria

The Star

The United States is likely to issue some sanctions relief to Syria in coming weeks following US President Donald Trump's announcement that all sanctions targeting Damascus would be lifted.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

Transcript

00:00obviously this is a new relationship we've now known each other known them for 24 hours so it's

00:29one that we think that a peaceful stable Syria would be one of the most dramatic improvements

00:37in the region in a very long time and we want to do everything we can to help achieve that we have

00:43governing authorities there now who have expressed not openly and repeatedly that they do that this

00:49is a nationalistic movement designed to building their country in a pluralistic society in which

00:54all the different elements of Syrian society are able to live together they've expressed an

00:58interest in being at peace with all their neighbors including Israel they've expressed an interest in

01:03driving out foreign fighters and terrorists and others that would destabilize the country and our

01:07enemies of this transitional authority and they've asked for our help and so we're going to try to

01:12help them now obviously we want to see progress made and we'll take every step that they take take

01:16and it'll be a long road because it's been a long time well we this is a road we were on so we've

01:21been doing the work the prep work for it their finance minister we provided him a visa to travel

01:27to Washington DC two weeks ago their foreign minister we provided him a visa to a week ago to

01:32travel to New York and met with our UN representative I was scheduled to come here and meet today with

01:38the foreign minister I was with the president when he made the decision to do this and included it in

01:42his speech so we've been doing preparatory work in that regard the core of these sanctions are statutory

01:47under the Caesar Act I've had members of Congress Congress and both parties ask us to use the waivers

01:54authorities in that law but and that's what the president intends to do those waivers have to be

02:00renewed every 180 days ultimately if we make enough progress we'd like to see the law repealed because

02:06you're going to struggle to find people to invest in a country when any in six months sanctions could

02:12come back we're not there yet that's premature I think we want to start with the initial waiver which

02:17will allow foreign partners who wanted to flow in aid to begin to do so without running the

02:21risk of sanctions I think as we make progress hopefully we'll be in a position soon or one

02:25day to go to Congress and ask them to permanently remove the sanctions

Category

Transcript

Recommended