Faisal Mekdad, Syria’s foreign minister, has confirmed that President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria will participate in the forthcoming Arab League summit scheduled for Friday.

King Salman invited Al-Assad to attend the meeting after the Arab League recently decided to re-admit Syria to the organisation after it was suspended in 2011.

At a preparatory foreign ministers meeting ahead of the summit on Wednesday, the league’s Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit and the Kingdom’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan welcomed Syria’s participation.

Mekdad later said that Syria “cannot be absent from any Arab summit.”