(Abu Dhabi) – The UAE and Germany will fund the setting up of a general secretariat of an economic working group, comprising Syrian business leaders and technocrats, which is preparing an economic agenda for the post-Assad regime to put the nation back on track.
The first meeting of the Working Group on Economic Recovery and Development of the Friends of the Syrian People was held in Abu Dhabi, in which 60 countries and international organisations endorsed the plan to set up a permanent body to coordinate the economic revival and reconstruction in the post-Assad period.
H.E. Dr Anwar Mohammed Gargash, UAE Minister for State for Foreign Affairs, and Dr Clemens von Goetz, Director-General for Africa and Middle East at the Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, co-chaired the meeting, in which the Syrian Opposition presented their economic vision to revive the economy in the first six months of the post-Assad era.
The meeting was held to prepare the ground for a permanent structure for the economic group in which it has been successful, said Dr Goetz, adding that now the secretariat would be set, may be, in Europe or elsewhere.
The participants of the meeting “reiterated the determination of Syrian people and supported their just cause and underlined that the future of Syria must be determined by the Syrian people and the Friends Group will stand firmly by them until their rightful and legitimate aspiration are fulfilled”, according to a communiqué issued after the meeting.
