Amman protests Syria's exclusion from parliament meet

By Laith al-Junaidi

AMMAN (AA) - Jordan has lodged an official protest with the Arab Parliament for its failure to invite Syrian representatives to attend an emergency meeting in Morocco last week.

In a Wednesday statement, Jordanian Parliament Speaker Atef Tarawneh stressed “the need to invite Syria to regular and emergency [Arab Parliament] meetings”.

In late 2011, the Cairo-based Arab League (with which the Arab Parliament is affiliated) suspended Syria's league membership while member-states withdrew their ambassadors from Damascus.

During the years that followed, Jordan-Syria ties deteriorated dramatically until August of this year, when Amman declared that its relationship with Damascus was "expected to take a more positive course”.

In his Wednesday statement, Tarawneh went so far as to congratulate Damascus for “the Syrian army’s recent victories against the Daesh terrorist group”.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating civil war that began in 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

The Arab Parliament was established following a 2001 Arab League summit in Amman. Its headquarters was initially set up in Damascus but was relocated to Cairo in 2012 following the eruption of the conflict in Syria.