The United States is likely to issue some sanctions relief to Syria in coming weeks following US President Donald Trump's announcement that all sanctions targeting Damascus would be lifted.
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00:00obviously this is a new relationship we've now known each other known them for 24 hours so it's
00:29one that we think that a peaceful stable Syria would be one of the most dramatic improvements
00:37in the region in a very long time and we want to do everything we can to help achieve that we have
00:43governing authorities there now who have expressed not openly and repeatedly that they do that this
00:49is a nationalistic movement designed to building their country in a pluralistic society in which
00:54all the different elements of Syrian society are able to live together they've expressed an
00:58interest in being at peace with all their neighbors including Israel they've expressed an interest in
01:03driving out foreign fighters and terrorists and others that would destabilize the country and our
01:07enemies of this transitional authority and they've asked for our help and so we're going to try to
01:12help them now obviously we want to see progress made and we'll take every step that they take take
01:16and it'll be a long road because it's been a long time well we this is a road we were on so we've
01:21been doing the work the prep work for it their finance minister we provided him a visa to travel
01:27to Washington DC two weeks ago their foreign minister we provided him a visa to a week ago to
01:32travel to New York and met with our UN representative I was scheduled to come here and meet today with
01:38the foreign minister I was with the president when he made the decision to do this and included it in
01:42his speech so we've been doing preparatory work in that regard the core of these sanctions are statutory
01:47under the Caesar Act I've had members of Congress Congress and both parties ask us to use the waivers
01:54authorities in that law but and that's what the president intends to do those waivers have to be
02:00renewed every 180 days ultimately if we make enough progress we'd like to see the law repealed because
02:06you're going to struggle to find people to invest in a country when any in six months sanctions could
02:12come back we're not there yet that's premature I think we want to start with the initial waiver which
02:17will allow foreign partners who wanted to flow in aid to begin to do so without running the
02:21risk of sanctions I think as we make progress hopefully we'll be in a position soon or one
02:25day to go to Congress and ask them to permanently remove the sanctions