“Any interested party in Syria should understand that attacking US Forces or our coalition partners will be a bad policy,” Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, director of the joint staff, said during a press conference.
His remarks came after Assad told Russian broadcaster RT he would not hesitate to use force to retake the third of the country held by the Syrian Democratic Forces.
“The only problem left in Syria is the SDF,” he told the channel, adding he saw “two options.”
“The first one: we started now opening doors for negotiations. Because the majority of them are Syrians, supposedly they like their country, they don’t like to be puppets to any foreigners,” Assad said in English.
[alarabiya.net]
1/6/18
-
GR
FR
DE
ES
IT
RU
EU
US troops are not leaving Syria and any attempt to remove them by force will be met with an armed response, a top Pentagon official said, reacting to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s RT interview.
ReplyDelete“Any interested party in Syria should understand that attacking US forces or our coalition partners will be a bad policy,” Director of Joint Staff Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon press briefing on Thursday.
Over 2,000 US troops in Syria are embedded with the SDF in the northeast as well as in the enclave of At-Tanf in the south, along the Jordanian border. McKenzie said the US troops and their local militia allies were staying in Tanf, quashing rumors of their impending withdrawal.
“We are there. Nothing has changed,” he said. “The maintenance of that deconfliction zone is important and we would view very gravely any actions that tended to change that.”
RT