Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara arrived in Riyadh on Wednesday with a delegation including the foreign, defense, finance and industry ministers and the head of the General Intelligence Directorate, on his second visit to the kingdom in weeks, after a trip to Riyadh on October 6.

He and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman witnessed the signing of agreements covering military cooperation, energy and infrastructure, and the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the defense agreement was the most notable but gave no details. The package included a cooperation agreement between the two countries’ defense ministries. Syria is in negotiations to join the Makkah defense pact, and Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani said at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain that Damascus considers “security in the Gulf as part of its own.”