The Biden administration said that it was “encouraged” by a meeting of the Arab League where members voted to readmit Syria.

The communiqué produced by the meeting, which took place in Amman over the weekend, also acknowledged a series of regional challenges stemming from the Syrian civil war.

The administration was “encouraged to see the joint communique mention many priorities that we and our partners share,” a spokesperson for the White House national security council told The National, a UAE state-backed paper, yesterday.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad undertook a brutal campaign of industrial mass killing throughout the civil war that wracked the country starting in 2011. Among other things, his government forcibly detained hundreds of thousands of people in prisons made notorious for widespread torture, rape, and mass executions.

Last June, a Syrian whistleblower who worked at a mass grave site from 2011 to 2018 told Congress that the regime is still digging mass graves. “Twice a week, three to four pickup trucks with 30 to 40 bodies of civilians that had been executed in Sednaya prison also arrived for disposal in the most inhumane way,” he said in his testimony, estimating that hundreds of bodies from other prisons and attacks on civilian centers arrived every week.

Citing the regime’s systematic human-rights atrocities, the administration has opposed efforts by other countries in the region to seek normalized ties with Damascus, which were ruptured during the war. But now that Syrian government forces have regained control of much of the country, there’s been a rush to reestablish ties with Assad. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Tunisia, and others have all made recent overtures to Syria.

Washington’s long-standing policy has been to oppose normalization with Syria, and while the administration claims that it continues to hew to that stance, officials have not consistently stuck to that message. In March, assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs Barbara Leaf said, “Our basic message has been that if you’re going to engage with the regime, get something for that.”

Arab League secretary-general Ahmed Aboul Gheit said this weekend that the body’s vote paves the way for Syria to attend a meeting slated to take place in Saudi Arabia later this month, according to The National. “Syrian President Bashar Al Assad can attend if he wishes to,” he said.