Saudi Arabia and Syria are holding talks on resuming consular services, more than a decade after the kingdom severed relations with President Bashar al-Assad's regime, Saudi state media said Thursday.

Assad had been diplomatically isolated since the 2011 crackdown on a popular uprising that escalated into war. Since the earthquake in Syria on 6 February, Arab countries have stepped up contacts and sent aid to Damascus.

"Discussions are underway between officials of the kingdom and their counterparts in Syria on a resumption of consular services" between the two countries, Al-Ekhbariya TV said Thursday night, citing an official of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Earthquake

This announcement comes about two weeks after the restoration of ties between the two rival powers of the Middle East: Iran, a great ally of Damascus, and Saudi Arabia, which had severed diplomatic ties in 2016.

The Saudi kingdom severed relations in 2012 with Syria where it supported rebels at the beginning of the war. But since the February 6 earthquake, Riyadh has sent aid to Syria to the affected populations, both in government-controlled and rebel-held areas.

Riyadh had so far avoided any direct contact with the government of Bashar al-Assad, preferring to coordinate with the Syrian Red Crescent for the distribution of aid to areas under Damascus' control.

"Consensus"

In February, a Saudi plane loaded with humanitarian aid landed in Aleppo, the country's second city, hit hard by the earthquake that also hit neighboring Turkey. It was the first Saudi plane to land in Syria since the war began.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhane said in February a new approach to Syria involving negotiations with Damascus to deal with humanitarian crises. The President of the United Arab Emirates declared, while receiving his Syrian counterpart in Abu Dhabi on March 19, that it was time for Damascus to return to the Arab fold.

At the end of 2018, the Emirates reopened its embassy in Damascus. And in March 2022, Bashar al-Assad made his first visit to an Arab country in Abu Dhabi. Assad, whose country was excluded from the Arab League at the end of 2011, also surrendered to the Sultanate of Oman on February 20, a first in twelve years of war in Syria. Oman is one of the few Arab countries, and the only one in the Gulf, to have always maintained formal diplomatic relations with Damascus since the beginning of the war.

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