The administration of US President Donald Trump, which in December last year announced that it was pulling out of Syria, on Thursday said that it would keep 200 US troops in the country for now.
“A small peacekeeping group of about 200 will remain in Syria for period of time,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
US Senator Lindsey Graham, who had criticized Trump’s decision to pull US forces out of Syria, applauded the president’s decision to leave a few hundred as part of an “international stabilizing force.”
Photo: AP
Graham said it would ensure that Turkey would not get into a conflict with Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which helped the US fight Islamic State militants. Turkey views Kurdish members of the SDF as terrorists.
Moreover, Graham said that leaving a small force in Syria would serve as a check on Iranian ambitions and help ensure that Islamic State fighters do not try to return.
“A safe zone in Syria made up of international forces is the best way to achieve our national security objectives of continuing to contain Iran, ensuring the enduring defeat of ISIS, protecting our Turkish allies, and securing the Turkish border with Syria,” Graham said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
The SDF is involved in a standoff over the final sliver of land held by the Islamic State in eastern Syria, close to the Iraq border.
It was unclear where the 200 remaining US troops would be stationed.
The US military has a limited network of bases inside Syria. Troops work mostly out of small camps in remote parts of the country’s northeast.
Also, US troops are among 200 to 300 coalition troops at a garrison in southern Syria, where they train and accompany local Syrian opposition forces on patrols to counter militants.
Trump on Thursday spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“On Syria, the two presidents agreed to continue coordinating on the creation of a potential safe zone,” the White House said in a statement about the call.
The White House also said that Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford would host their Turkish counterparts in Washington this week for further talks.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
RSS