No ties with Syria before Arab League decision: Kuwait

By Mohamed Abdul Ghaffar

KUWAIT CITY

Kuwaiti Deputy FM Khaled al-Jarallah said Monday that his country’s embassy in Damascus would not be reopened without a greenlight from the Cairo-based Arab League.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, al-Jarallah also criticized what he described as “fabrications” by the Syrian regime, which on Sunday added the names of 30 Kuwaiti nationals to its list of “terrorists”.

Along with al-Jarallah himself, these names also reportedly include Nayef al-Ajmi, a former Islamic affairs minister who has also been accused by the U.S. of “supporting jihadists” in Syria.

The names also include those of two sitting MPs, several former lawmakers, and a number of Muslim preachers who led donation campaigns for the uprising against the Assad regime.

On Monday, local media outlets reported that Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry had summoned Syrian Chargé d'Affaires Ghassan Anjarini to protest the move by Damascus.

Last week, both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced plans to reopen their embassies in the Syrian capital following a seven-year hiatus.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected severity.