KHARTOUM, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Sudanese government said on Monday that the visit of President Omar al-Bashir to Syria was an initiative to unite the Arab people and an attempt to overcome the Syrian crisis.

"The visit of President al-Bashir to Syria came in the continuation of his initiatives to unite the Arab people and overcome the Syrian crisis," said Faisal Hassan Ibrahim, the Sudanese presidential assistant, in his address to a gathering of students in the capital Khartoum.

A day earlier, al-Bashir visited the Syrian capital Damascus, where he was received by his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad and a number of ministers in the Syrian government.

Al-Bashir was accompanied by Minister of the Presidency Fadl Abdalla Fadl, State Minister at Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Osama Faisal and Sudanese Ambassador to Syria Khalid Ahmed Mohamed.