File: Riad Hijab, chief coordinator High Negotiations Committee (HNC) leaves after a news conference aside of Syria peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland, April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The French newspaper “Le Figaro” reported that Riad Hijab will become the prime minister of Syria during a transitional period, and will head a transitional government. Therefore, the United States will not have to deal with Mohammed al-Golani, whom it considers a “terrorist” at the head of “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham”.
Hijab is a Syrian politician born in 1966 in Deir ez-Zor Governorate. On June 6, 2012, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appointed him as prime minister, succeeding Adel Safar, but he announced his defection from the regime only two months later on August 6, and joined the popular revolution calling for the fall of the regime. He left with his family to Jordan. During his tenure as prime minister, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on him, along with others, on July 18, 2012, before lifting them a few days after his defection.
He was elected general coordinator of the High Negotiations Committee in 2015, before resigning two years later, expressing his disappointment with attempts to prolong the regime and international settlements that he saw as not serving the goals of the Syrian revolution.
Before assuming the position of Prime Minister, Riad Hijab held several government positions. He was the governor of Quneitra from 2008 until February 2011, then the governor of Latakia at the end of the same month, before becoming the Minister of Agriculture in Adel Safar’s government in April 2011.
( El Nashua)