The Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Faisal Mekdad, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Syria, will come to the country tomorrow as part of his first official visit in more than 12 years.
The ministry said on Sunday that the visit came at the invitation of Foreign Minister Nabil Ammar and will last two days, from April 17-19.
He added that this visit “comes as a blessing of the long-standing ties of brotherhood between the two sides and as a wish to return bilateral relations to their normal course following the appointment of ambassadors to Tunisia and Damascus.”
This is the first visit of a high-ranking Syrian regime official to Tunisia since the outbreak of the revolution against Assad in March 2011 and the subsequent severing of relations with the regime as a result of suppressing popular protests.
The regime-affiliated newspaper Al-Watan said that, according to diplomatic sources, an announcement is likely to be made during this visit that the regime’s embassy in the Tunisian capital will be reopened, with representation at ambassadorial level.
Previously, the Syrian regime and Tunisia announced that the embassies in Tunis and Damascus were reopened and that the diplomatic representation between them was upgraded to the ambassador level.
Faisal al-Miqdad’s visit to Tunisia is considered to be his fourth visit to Arab countries in 17 days, as he had previously visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria within the framework of Arab normalization with Assad.
