Emmanuel Macron visits Damascus and meets Ahmed al-Charaa, returning 23 archaeological artifacts and touring the Great Mosque of the Umayyads as he seeks reconstruction funds and private investment.Macron arrives with a business delegation and meets Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani, urging removal of long-running sanctions that France has largely pressed to lift and pressing for signed agreements to be implemented.The trip, the first by a major Western leader since
Bashar al-Assad's ouster in 2024, precedes a
NATO summit in Ankara where
Ahmed al-Charaa is expected to meet President
Donald Trump and follows an earlier visit by
Volodymyr Zelenskyy.