Senior US official in Syria as relations improve

A senior U.S. official is meeting the Syrian president as part of President Barack Obama’s attempts to improve ties with Damascus after years of tense relations.

William Burns, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, was received on Wednesday by President Bashar Assad. Mr. Burns is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Syria since January 2005.

The visit comes a day after Mr. Obama said he would nominate a career diplomat to become the United States’ first ambassador to Damascus since 2005.

The tense relations between Syria and the U.S. started to improve after Mr. Obama took office last year. Mr. Obama made changing the United States’ image in the Middle East a priority of his first year.