A Jordanian parliamentary delegation met in Damascus on Monday with Syrian regime head Bashar al-Assad on the first official visit to Syria in more than seven years after the opening of the Jaber-Nassib crossing last month. According to Khalid Abu Hassan, one of the eight MPs, who visited Damascus and met with Assad, the Syrian leadership has shown a positive attitude towards normalizing relations with Amman, and called for the need to remove all obstacles in this regard. During his meeting with the delegation, Assad reportedly expressed his appreciation to the Jordanian leadership and people for the pressure exerted on Jordan due to the Syrian crisis, stressing that these pressures “will not change the relationship between the two countries.” The visit comes at the initiative of some lawmakers in the framework of promoting joint parliamentary cooperation between the two countries. Syria’s news agency, SANA, quoted Assad as saying that the “importance of the parliamentary delegations’ visits stems from the fact that they are the real reflection of the popular positions and the compass for the bilateral relations between countries, which must always be driven by the interests of the peoples and their aspirations.” Meanwhile, Kuwaiti Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Al-Jarallah denied that Kuwait had applied for the opening of its embassy in Damascus. “According to our information, some Arab countries have applied for rearrangement of their embassies in Damascus, but the Kuwaiti embassy there is closed and the relationship is frozen so far,” the minister was quoted as saying.