DAMASCUS, October 28 (Aalimi Nation) – Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus on Wednesday, the first visit to Syria by an Iraqi prime minister since Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December 2024.

Syrian state media said Mr al-Sharaa received Mr al-Zaidi, who is leading a high-level delegation, at Damascus international airport. The two leaders later held talks at the People's Palace. Mr al-Zaidi took office in May.

Iraqi officials said the talks covered bilateral relations, with a focus on economic and oil cooperation. According to Iraq's official statements, the agenda included exporting Iraqi oil through the Baniyas line on Syria's Mediterranean coast, increasing trade between the two countries and joint agricultural development. Local media also reported that border security and counter-terrorism would be discussed, though officials had not released details.

"The Iraqi and Syrian people are one people in two countries," Mr al-Zaidi said, according to the Iraqi side. He also stressed the need to develop partnership and joint cooperation "in various fields, especially economic and social affairs".

Mr al-Sharaa expressed great appreciation for the visit of Mr al-Zaidi and his delegation and stressed the depth of bilateral relations, according to the account of the meeting.

Iraq recently began exporting limited quantities of oil through Syria after shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted by the war involving Iran earlier this year. In July, the two governments signed agreements to revive the Haditha-Baniyas pipeline, which carries oil from Iraq to Syria's coast. They also signed a memorandum of understanding with a consortium of three companies that includes a major United States oil company.

In an interview broadcast on Tuesday evening, Mr al-Sharaa said "something positive has been built" in relations, particularly on the economic side. He described Syria as Iraq's strategic gateway to the Mediterranean and stressed the importance of rebuilding pipelines to Baniyas. He said several companies had visited Syria over the past year with investment proposals worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He also said Syria wants to deepen social ties and ease travel between the two countries.

Mr al-Sharaa said on Tuesday that the Syrian-Iraqi border, which runs for about 600 kilometres, was "completely" secure and that Damascus and Baghdad were already coordinating on several issues.

The leaders are also expected to face questions about detainees. In February, the United States moved more than 5,700 suspected Islamic State detainees from more than 60 countries to Iraq from prisons run by Kurdish-led forces in northern and north-eastern Syria. Mr al-Sharaa said that some of the roughly 3,000 Syrian detainees among those transferred had "no connection" to the Islamic State group, and that efforts were under way to sort their cases and discuss their return to Syria.

The two leaders last met in September in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, where they discussed political and security coordination and wider economic and trade cooperation.

No official readout of any agreements reached during Wednesday's talks had been issued at the time of writing.