BEIRUT: Prime Minister Najib Mikati denied Tuesday reports he had “secretly” met with Syrian Foreign Affairs Minister Walid Moallem and former Syrian intelligence chief Rustom Ghazaleh at Damascus airport.
The prime minister’s statement was in response to a report published Tuesday by Al-Mustaqbal newspaper which cited a Western diplomatic source as saying that while Mikati was flying to Paris for a “Friends of Libya” conference, he had made a secret stopover at Damascus airport, where he met for two hours with Moallem and Ghazaleh.
A statement released by Mikati’s office described the report as “totally baseless.”
“The prime minister’s visits are made public and announced in line with the norms,” the statement said.
France hosted a "Friends of Libya" conference in September to allow states that stood by during the uprising that ousted Col. Moammar Gadhafi to belatedly back Tripoli's fledgling revolutionary regime.
In the Al-Mustaqbal report Tuesday, the diplomatic source said Moallem had asked Mikati to test the pulse of the U.S. administration, particularly U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, regarding a potential swap whereby Damascus would offer to be more cooperative on issues such as Iraq and Palestine in exchange for an easing of pressure by the U.S. and the international community.
“Although Moallem was able to make such an offer directly while he was in New York to address the U.N. General Assembly, it appears that the Assad regime wanted to test the pulse of the U.S. administration through a third party so that he [Assad] can say that the initiative was carried out without the knowledge of the Syrian leadership,” the source told Al-Mustaqbal.
The news comes amid reports that Mikati is due to hold a meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is facing growing international pressure over what activists describe as a brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters in his country.
A source close to Mikati told The Daily Star Sunday that the prime minister’s visit is likely to take place at any time, though no final date has been set yet for the visit.