Syria’s deposed president Bashar al Assad wasn’t always condemned as a pariah by the UK government.
This week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer welcomed his fall, declaring Syrians had “put up with his brutal regime for far, far too long”.
But it was a different story back in the early days of Assad‘s regime, when Tony Blair made extraordinary efforts to court him.
Syria latest: Extent of Assad’s luxury ‘quite astonishing’
He visited Syria, the president visited the UK and met the Queen and it was later reported that Assad was even considered for an honorary knighthood.
All this was because when he succeeded his father, Hafez al Assad, as president in 2000, Mr Blair regarded him as a moderniser and reformer he could do business with.
And so, in diplomatic moves that would later have been unthinkable, Mr Blair visited Damascus in 2001 and then welcomed him to Downing Street in 2002.
Relations between the UK and Syria were so cordial in those days that Assad was even given the honour of a meeting with the Queen during his visit to London.
But the Blair courtship began before the young Assad succeeded his late father. Just months after Labour’s 1997 election victory, the government’s Middle East minister, Derek Fatchett, was sent to Syria.
The following year, then foreign secretary Robin Cook visited and during Mr Blair’s first term there were more ministerial visits, including by Mr Blair’s closest ally Peter Mandelson.
Labour minister Peter Hain told parliament in 2000 that Assad was a leader with “a lot of vision and a modern outlook” who knew Britain well and was “well placed to lead Syria forward”.
And after Mr Mandelson visited Syria in 2001, he claimed Assad was an “intelligent and cultured individual” who wanted to rescue his country “from economic backwardness”.
