‘Truly historic’ for both Damascus and Washington: Ex-US official

Thomas Warrick, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, says it would have been unthinkable for a new president of Syria to be “greeted warmly in the Oval Office” by a US president in Washington, DC, even a year ago. “Everyone would have thought you are completely mad, and yet here we have the pictures,” said Warrick, who was also a former US deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy.