US President Donald Trump left for Saudi Arabia on Monday, on what he called a "historic" tour of the Middle East that will mix urgent diplomacy on Gaza and Iran with huge business deals.
Air Force One took off from Joint Base Andrews near Washington for a journey that will include visits to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates -- and possibly talks on the Ukraine war in Turkey.
Trump said he is "thinking" of flying to Turkey on Thursday for possible talks between Ukraine and Russia.
"I was thinking about actually flying over there. There's a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen," Trump told journalists at the White House prior to departing for a trip to the Middle East.
Trump said he was considering offering sanctions relief to Syria as it seeks to rebuild after a grinding decade-plus civil war.
"We are going to have to make a decision on the sanctions, which we may very well relieve. We may take them off of Syria because we want to give them a fresh start," Trump told journalists at the White House prior to departing on a trip to the Middle East.
Syria's Islamist authorities, who toppled longtime president Bashar al-Assad in December, are working to rebuild the country's infrastructure and economy after almost 14 years of devastating conflict.
The new government has been pushing for Assad-era sanctions to be removed to revive the country's battered economy and support reconstruction.
Syria's foreign ministry welcomed Trump's remarks and said it "considers them an encouraging step towards ending the suffering of the Syrian people".
The foreign ministry statement said Assad-era sanctions "directly target the Syrian people and hinder the recovery and reconstruction process".
Syrians "look forward to the full lifting of sanctions as part of steps that support peace and prosperity in Syria and the region, and open the possibility for constructive international cooperation," the statement added.
Some countries have said they would wait to see how the new authorities exercise their power and ensure human rights are respected before lifting sanctions, opting instead for targeted and temporary exemptions.
A February United Nations Development Programme report estimated that at current growth rates, Syria would need more than 50 years to return to the economic level it had before its devastating civil war, and called for massive investment to accelerate the process.
"Bad nuclear war"
The US president said that US intervention prevented a "bad nuclear war" between India and Pakistan after the South Asian rivals agreed to a ceasefire following a series of clashes.
"We stopped a nuclear conflict. I think it could have been a bad nuclear war; millions of people could have been killed. So I'm very proud of that," Trump told reporters at the White House.
With AFP
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