US diplomats and hostage envoy in Syria on first visit since Assad ouster

DAMASCUS, Syria — The first U.S. diplomats to visit Syria since President Bashar Assad’s ouster earlier this month held talks with transitional officials in Damascus on Friday to press for an inclusive government and seek information on the whereabouts of missing American journalist Austin Tice.

The top American diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, former special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein and the Biden administration’s chief envoy for hostage negotiations, Roger Carstens, met with interim leaders and members of civil society, officials said.

Details of the meetings were not immediately available and a news conference the officials had planned was canceled due to unspecified security concerns. Leaf and the others had left the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus earlier Friday without making any comments to waiting journalists.

The State Department said the delegation's agenda would be topped by seeking information about Tice as well as pushing the principles of minority rights and a rejection of terrorism. The administration says those will be critical for U.S. support for a new government.

Shortly before the delegation arrived in Damascus, the U.S. military said it had conducted airstrikes in northeastern Syria on Thursday, killing a leader of the Islamic State group and one other militant.

In a statement, the U.S. Central Command said the strike was in an area formerly controlled by the ousted Syrian government and was part of an ongoing effort to prevent IS insurgents from taking advantage of the upheaval in Syria, including any plan to release the more than 8,000 IS prisoners held in detention by Kurds who have partnered with the U.S.

Leaf's team is also the first group of American diplomats to formally visit Syria in more than a decade, since the U.S. shuttered its embassy in Damascus in 2012, although a small number of U.S. diplomats had been assigned to political advisory roles with military units inside Syria since then.

“They will be engaging directly with the Syrian people, including members of civil society, activists, members of different communities, and other Syrian voices about their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” the State Department said.

The U.S. has redoubled efforts to find Tice and return him home, saying officials have communicated with the rebels who ousted Assad's government about the American journalist. Carstens traveled previously to Lebanon to seek information.

Tice, who has had his work published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and others, disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus as the Syrian civil war intensified.

A video released weeks after Tice went missing showed him blindfolded and held by armed men and saying, “Oh, Jesus.” He has not been heard from since. Assad's government publicly denied that it was holding him.

The rebel group that spearheaded the assault on Damascus that forced Assad to flee — Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS — is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and others. While that designation comes with a raft of sanctions, it does not prohibit U.S. officials from speaking to its members or leaders.

The State Department said Rubinstein, Leaf and Carstens would meet with HTS officials but did not say if the group's leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with al-Qaida, would be among them.

U.S. officials say al-Sharaa’s public statements about protecting minority and women’s rights are welcomed, but they remain skeptical that he will follow through on them in the long run.

Although the U.S. has not had a formal diplomatic presence in Syria since 2012, there are U.S. troops in small parts of Syria engaged in the fight against the Islamic State militant group.

The Pentagon revealed Thursday that the U.S. had doubled the number of its forces in Syria to fight IS before Assad’s fall. The U.S. also has significantly stepped up airstrikes against IS targets over concern that a power vacuum would allow the militant group to reconstitute itself.

The diplomats' visit to Damascus will not result in the immediate reopening of the U.S. embassy, which is under the protection of the Czech government, according to U.S. officials, who said decisions on diplomatic recognition will be made when the new Syrian authorities make their intentions clear.