Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the U.S. Saturday for a landmark visit, a day after Washington lifted his designation from its terrorism blacklist.
Al-Sharaa, whose forces ousted longtime dictator Bashar Assad late last year, is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.
It's the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country's independence in 1946, according to analysts.
The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the U.S. president's regional tour in May.
Washington's envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said earlier this month that al-Sharaa would "hopefully" sign an agreement to join the international U.S.-led alliance against the Daesh terrorist group.
The United States plans to establish a military base near Damascus "to coordinate humanitarian aid and observe developments between Syria and Israel," a diplomatic source in Syria told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The State Department's decision Friday to remove al-Sharaa from the blacklist was widely expected.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said al-Sharaa's government had been meeting U.S. demands, including on working to find missing Americans and on eliminating any remaining chemical weapons.
"These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime," Pigott said.
The spokesman added that the U.S. delisting would promote "regional security and stability as well as an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process."
The Syrian Interior Ministry announced Saturday that it had carried out 61 raids and made 71 arrests in a "proactive campaign to neutralise the threat" of Daesh, according to the official SANA news agency.
It said the raids targeted locations where Daesh sleeper cells remain, including Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Deir el-Zour, Raqqa and Damascus.
After his arrival, al-Sharaa met with representatives from Syrian organizations in Washington, according to his country's official media.
The Syrian foreign minister posted a social media video, filmed before al-Sharaa's departure, of him playing basketball with CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper and Kevin Lambert, the head of the international anti-Daesh operation in Iraq, alongside the caption "work hard, play harder."
Al-Sharaa's Washington trip comes after his landmark U.N. visit in September – his first time on U.S. soil – where he became the first Syrian president in decades to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
On Thursday, Washington led a vote by the Security Council to remove U.N. sanctions against him.
Formerly affiliated with al-Qaida, al-Sharaa's group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was delisted as a terrorist group by Washington as recently as July.
Since taking power, Syria's new leaders have sought to break from their past and present a moderate image more tolerable to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.
The White House visit "is further testament to the U.S. commitment to the new Syria and a hugely symbolic moment for the country's new leader, who thus marks another step in his astonishing transformation from militant leader to global statesman," International Crisis Group U.S. program director, Michael Hanna, said.
Al-Sharaa is expected to seek funds for Syria, which faces significant challenges in rebuilding after 13 years of civil war.
In October, the World Bank put a "conservative best estimate" of the cost of rebuilding Syria at $216 billion.
