Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will visit Syria this week in a sign of improving ties between the two Arab countries after years of tensions.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will visit Syria this week in a sign of improving ties between the two Arab countries after years of tensions.

Abdullah will travel to Syria in the coming days for an official visit, the state-run Saudi Press Agency announced late yesterday, without specifying the date. The king will arrive tomorrow and spend two days in Damascus, the Syrian newspaper Al Watan reported today, citing an unidentified Arab diplomat.

The Saudi monarch’s trip comes after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a surprise appearance last month at the opening of a new university in Saudi Arabia that King AbdullahKing Abdullah is promoting as a symbol of modernization efforts. In March, Abdullah also hosted Assad at a four-way meeting of Arab states aimed at persuading Syria to distance itself from its ally Iran.

Saudi Arabia has been at odds with Syria for years because of Syrian links to Iran, the main Saudi rival in the region. Ties deteriorated further after a United Nations investigation linked the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, a close Saudi associate, to Syrian officials. Syria has denied any involvement.

Syrian support for Palestinian militant group Hamas as well as the Lebanese Islamic Hezbollah movement, in collaboration with Iran, also has been an irritant to U.S.-allied states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Saudi Arabia, a largely Sunni Muslim country, is concerned about the rising regional influence of Shiite Muslim Iran, which has ambitions to be the main power in the Gulf, said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a politics professor at the Al Ain-based Emirates University.