Foreign ministers of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS will meet this Wednesday in Washington, upon the invitation of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The coalition, which groups 79 countries, will conduct a review and assessment of its achievements over the past four years and will seek to develop a plan to defeat ISIS sleeper cells in Iraq, Syria, and other countries.
Pompeo called for this conference to coordinate efforts among coalition members following the controversial decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw from Syria.
The United States established this alliance in 2014. Lebanon is among the founding nations but is not involved in military operations. Minister of Foreign Affairs Gebran Bassil signed the founding document about five years ago.
Bassil, however, will not be present at this global conference and has dispatched Gabriel Issa to represent Lebanon. A source close to the minister told Asharq Al-Awsat that he decided to skip the conference because its agenda included an item on “the voluntary return of refugees”, instead of the clause that he pushed for during the preparatory meetings on the “safe and necessary return of the displaced.”
The Lebanese foreign minister has actively engaged in many conferences on the Syrian crisis, including the Vienna Conference, where he persuaded his counterparts to include the expression of “safe return” instead of “voluntary return”, but the US and European states are insisting on the term “voluntary.”
According to US diplomatic sources, Washington will focus during the conference on preventing the return of ISIS militants to Iraq and Syria following the withdrawal of American forces.
The sources added that the Coalition would continue to seek the establishment of stability in areas that were liberated from ISIS in order to “facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who were displaced due to violence.”
They also emphasized the “voluntary return of the displaced Syrians,” underlining the continued work on drying up the sources of funding of ISIS and its sleeper cells around the world.
Pompeo will meet with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Britain, France and Germany before the opening of the plenary session to discuss developments in the wake of Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria, according to the sources.
