Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara on Tuesday met the commander of the country's largest Kurdish armed group and discussed integrating it into the state forces, official television said.
The issue has been a major hurdle in the quest by the government, which overthrew the regime of former president Bashar Al Assad, to control the whole country.
The meeting between Mr Al Shara and Mazloum Abdi, head of the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, in Damascus, came as Syria is considered as a possible alternative land route to the Strait of Hormuz, the focal point of the war between Iran and the US.
Washington established the SDF as its main ally in Syria during the 2011 to 2024 civil war. But its support for the group waned as it normalised ties with Damascus.
Mr Al Shara and Mr Abdi discussed implementing a US-brokered deal in January that halted fighting between the SDF and the government, state TV reported. The deal stopped a government advance in eastern Syria that led to the takeover of most of the SDF's territorial gains from the civil war.
But the SDF remained in control of most of the Kurdish population centres in the east, which are in a corner of Syria near the borders with Turkey and Iraq.
"The meeting discussed ... continuing the integration into the institutions of the state," state TV reported, without elaborating.
The deal would mean the dissolution of the SDF, a group on which the US spent $1 billion and that was the main ground force in the American-led war on ISIS in Syria.
A Syrian-Kurdish source close to the SDF said that Mr Abdi realised the group would have to be dissolved eventually.
But the source said Mr Abdi would not agree to it unless SDF commanders are included in the new military, and a police force in the north-east has a significant Kurdish presence.
"Damascus appears to be willing to cede some control over the police," the source said. "The main differences are about the SDF in the army. Al Shara wants it diluted. Abdi does not."
The January deal committed the SDF to submit to the new regime. But ties between the government and minority groups, mainly Alawites and Druze, have been marred by violence.
A key figure in that deal was Nechirvan Barzani, the President of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq and nephew of Kurdish statesman Masoud Barzani.
Masoud Barzani has sought to protect Syria’s Kurds from mass violence that befell other minorities after the civil war, particularly from Arab tribes in eastern Syria with grievances against the SDF.
Members of these tribes took part last year in a government military campaign against a Druze area in southern Syria, and were a major part in a government offensive in January against the SDF.
Under American pressure, the SDF retreated to Kurdish areas in the north-east, relinquishing most of its vast territorial acquisitions along the ancient Euphrates Valley. The area accounts for most of Syria’s oil, gas, commodities and power production, although most of these areas are Arab-majority.
On Monday, Nechirvan Barzani met Mr Al Shara in Damascus, in the first high-level visit by an Iraqi Kurdish official since the downfall of the Assad regime in December 2024.
Mr Abdi welcomed the visit as contributing to "the resolution of the Kurdish issue in the region". Mr Barzani said he discussed with Mr Al Shara the "importance of Syria’s role in enhancing peace, security and stability in the region", without mentioning the SDF.
