UNITED NATIONS: Syria’s foreign minister raised his country’s new flag at UN headquarters in New York, hailing the move as a “proclamation of a new existence” after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Asaad al-Shaibani raised the three-starred flag, officially adopted after Assad’s December ouster, and later spoke to the Security Council, where he urged a lifting of international sanctions and for Israel to be pressured to leave Syrian territory.
“This flag is not a mere symbol, but rather a proclamation of a new existence,” he said in his first United Nations speech.
Since Assad’s fall to Islamist-led forces, Israel has deployed troops in a UN-controlled buffer zone that has separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights since 1974.
“We would like to ask the Council to make pressure on Israel to withdraw from Syria,” al-Shaibani said in his first UN speech.
