Dhaka, Jan. 13 -- European foreign ministers will meet at the end of January to discuss the lifting of sanctions on Syria, the EU foreign policy chief said on Sunday in Riyadh ahead of a meeting of top Middle Eastern and Western diplomats and Syria's new foreign minister.

Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, said the foreign ministers would convene in Brussels on Jan 27 in an effort to decide how the 27-nation bloc would relax sanctions on Syria.

After 13 years of civil war, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad was ousted in a lightning offensive by insurgent forces led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) a month ago. The group has since set up a caretaker government in Damascus.

Any European decision to ease sanctions would ...