Syria’s President Bashar Assad will attend the upcoming Arab League summit which will be held on Friday, the country’s foreign minister Faisal Mekdad has confirmed.

King Salman invited 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.”