Britain’s foreign minister said Sunday that London had established diplomatic contact with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group in Syria, which led the offensive that ousted Bashar al-Assad.

They remain “a proscribed terrorist organisation, but we can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact, as you would expect”, said Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

“We want to see a representative government, an inclusive government. We want to see chemical weapons stockpiles secured, and not used, and we want to ensure that there is not continuing violence,” he added.

“So, for all of those reasons, using all the channels that we have available, and those are diplomatic and of course intelligence-led channels, we seek to deal with HTS where we have to.”

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