29 Mar 2024
Friday 31 March 2017 - 13:36
Story Code : 255646

Assad Must Go no more: US Govt shifts priorities in Syria

Tasnim Washingtons priorities in Syria have changed with the new administration, and the US will no longer focus on the removal of President Bashar Assad as a condition for ending the six-year civil war, a top official said.

"Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out," Ambassador Nikki Haley told a small group of reporters on Thursday.

"Our priority is to really look at how do we get things done, who do we need to work with to really make a difference for the people in Syria."

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the future of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.

Tillerson was in Ankara meeting with his Turkish colleague Mevlut Cavusoglu. Some of their discussion involved Turkeys support for the US-led coalition against Daesh (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria, Russia Today reported.

Since 2011, when the conflict in Syria began, Washington has insisted that Assad must go as the only acceptable solution for peace in the country.

The US has provided weapons and training to what it called moderate rebels in Syria, ostensibly so they could fight IS rather than the government.

Leaving the State Department in January, now former Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged that the Obama administration planned to oust Assads government by supporting the rebels, but that whole ball game changed when Russia intervened in September 2015.

Turkey also intervened in Syria, launching Operation "Euphrates Shield in August 2016. Ankara officially announced the operations end on Wednesday, but did not say if and when the Turkish army will withdraw from the zone it occupied in northern Syria.
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