Tunisia's President Kais Saied on Monday ordered his foreign affair minister to initiate procedures that would appoint a new ambassador in the Syrian capital of Damascus, the Tunisian presidency said, the latest Arab move to end Syria's regional isolation. Tunisia cut off diplomatic relations with Syria nearly a decade ago to protest Assad's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011 that developed into war in which hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed and millions sent fleeing. Tunisia has sent signals it was open to changing its diplomatic stance with Syria. Tunisia reinstituted a limited diplomatic mission to Syria in 2017, in part to help track more than 3,000 Tunisian militants fighting in Syria.