Prisoner Transfer Treaty between Romania and Syria
A prisoner transfer agreement was signed between Romanian president Traian Băsescu and his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al Assad at the Cotroceni Palace.
Articol de Carmen Gavrilă, 11 Noiembrie 2010, 11:52
The agreement could facilitate the extradition of Syrian citizen Omar Hayssam, convicted in his absence for the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005.
Other agreements were signed in the presence of the two presidents between the two Foreign Affairs ministries, a cooperation agreement for preventing organised crime, an international road transport agreement, and an environment ministry agreement.
President Traian Băsescu said he had discussed about the Middle East situation and developing a Romanian – Syrian economic relation with President Bashar al Assad.
‘The discussions enabled us to analyze the bilateral relation, the Middle East situation and the perspective of developing Romanian – Syrian economic relations. In the same, time, we discussed the perspective of the European Union – Syria relations as a whole.’
The Syrian president said that there’s still a lot of work to be done when it comes to economic relations, even if political relations are very good.
‘Your visit to Syria, two years ago, had a positive effect on bilateral relations, at a political level, but there’s still a problem at the economic level. The level of commercial relations is still low and we would like to encourage our economic cooperation by means of this visit,’ said the Syrian president.
Bashar al Assad also said Romania could play an active role in the Middle East peace process, and could support the new American initiatives in the area.
Translated by: Ciocănel Tudor and Raluca Mizdrea
MA Students, MTTLC, Bucharest University
