Palestine president supports Arab League readmitting Syria regime

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said he supports reinstating the Syrian regime to the Arab League in the latest sign of regional rapprochement to Damascus.

Abbas made the comments to Russian state-run Sputnik news agency in a report published on Wednesday.

"In principle, we support the return of Syria to the Arab League and we hope that this goal would be reached through consultations between Arab states," ِAbbas was quoted as saying.

Abbas also denied recent reports that he would visit Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Arab states Lebanon and Tunisia have recently called for Syria's return to the regional body.

The Arab League suspended Syria's membership in November 2011 as the death toll in the country's civil war mounted.

However, Qatar has rejected normalising ties with Assad and any plans to allow Syria to rejoin the Arab League.

"Normalisation with the Syrian regime at this stage is the normalisation of a person involved in war crimes, and this should not be acceptable," Qatar's foreign minister said last month.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain reopened its embassy in Damascus in December, the same month Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir made the first visit of any Arab leader to the Syrian capital since the start of the war.

Syria's opposition leader Nasr al-Hariri has pleaded with Arab leaders not to rebuild relations with Assad.

The Assad regime has stressed it will not accept Arab states "imposing conditions" on it in exchange for its return to the pan-Arab body.

Assad now controls two-thirds of the country - following military backing from Russia and Iran - while rebel groups are holed up in Idlib and parts of Aleppo and Hama provinces.

Syria's war broke out in 2011, when regime forces brutally suppressed pro-democracy and reform demonstrations.

Syria's multi-fronted war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions, with regime pursuing horrific tactics such as chemical weapon attacks.