Barbara Leaf, the State Department's top official for the Middle East, will travel to Damascus this week in a sign of renewed relations with the transitional Syrian government, Axios reported.

The visit will be the first meeting by a State Department official in years and is an attempt at a diplomatic reset following the fall of the Assad regime.

American officials have been in direct contact with the terrorist-designated rebel group that led the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday.

Blinken, speaking at a news conference in Jordan Sunday, was the first U.S. official to publicly confirm contacts between the Biden administration and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which led a coalition of armed opposition groups that drove Assad from power and into asylum in Russia earlier this month.

On Thursday, Blinken said the main focus of the talks will be to ensure all groups are brought into the discussions.

"What is the international community, what are the neighbors looking for as this transition takes place in Syria? And we all agreed we want to see something that's inclusive, that's nonsectarian, that respects minorities, women, that deals with any chemical weapons that may be remaining in Syria, that doesn't ally with ISIS or any of the terrorist groups that are there," he said.

"But it really requires HTS and other groups that are there to move forward in this inclusive way."

The discussions with HTS also touched on the fate of American journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria for 12 years, and setting up a framework for the U.S. to potentially recognize the new Syrian government.

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