In a surprise move, President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday appointed former Electricity Minister Emad Khamis to form a new cabinet, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.
Khamis is set to replace current Prime Minister Wael al-Halaki, although no details were given in the report as to why the change was happening. The 54-year-old al-Halaki had held the post since August 2012.
The announcement comes two months after Assad's Baath party and its allies won the majority of seats in the country's parliament in an election that was decried internationally as a fraud.
The EU imposed sanctions against Khamis in March 2012, accusing the former electrical engineer of sharing culpability for violence committed against Syria's population.
A year after the outbreak of the war in 2011, Assad formed a new government under Prime Minister Riad Hijab, only for Hijab to flee soon afterwards to join the opposition.
An exhibition at the German Emigration Center tells the story of a Syrian family's escape to Germany. Photos and mementos give an impression of the Koto family's long trek to Europe.
Image: Sammlung Deutsches AuswandererhausThe Kotos in 2006: Khalil, his wife Hamida and the children Mannan, Dolovan, Ayaz and Nervana. Back then, there was no civil war, no destruction, no hardship - and the family never thought they would one day have to flee Syria.
At the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Khalil Koto headed a branch of the country's Energy Ministry in his hometown Afrin in northwestern Syria. The electrical engineer soon lost his job, there was a shortage of water and food, and in April 2014, the situation was so dire that the family decided to flee to Turkey, where Khalil's mother lived.
Khalil couldn't find work in Turkey, so in July 2014, the family agreed to move on to Germany. The fact that Khalil's brother already lived in Europe helped the family make the decision. The spoon, above, is a reminder of the six months the Kotos spent in Bulgarian refugee camps.
Finally in Germany, the family was granted asylum in the northern city of Bremen. A woman there gave Khalil this pair of jeans, the refugee's first piece of clothing in Germany. That same year, the family was eventually housed in the port city of Bremerhaven, about 50 kilometers north of Bremen.
Today, the children go to a German school, while Khalil and his wife Hamida take German lessons. The electrical engineer hopes he'll find a job soon. The family enjoys remembering life in Syria. Ayaz, the youngest, still has his Syrian pre-school ID from Aleppo.
'Political transition'?
Assad's appointment of Khamis casts further doubts on stalled UN-backed peace talks aimed at achieving a political end to the over five-year conflict.
"The window of opportunity is coming quickly to a close unless we maintain alive the cessation of hostilities, we increase humanitarian aid and we come to some common understanding of a political transition," said UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura on Tuesday.
"Then we can have, hopefully in July, inter-Syrian talks that are not about principles but about concrete steps to a political transition," he added.
But the UN's chief mediator in the Syria peace talks warned that they could not proceed "while hostilities are escalating and civilians are starving."
ls,blc/kl (Reuters, AFP)
