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Washington: President Donald Trump agreed in a National Security Council meeting this week to keep US troops in Syria a little longer to defeat Daesh but wants them out relatively soon, a senior administration official said.
Trump did not approve a specific withdrawal timetable at the meeting, the official said. He wants to ensure Daesh militants are defeated but wants other countries in the region and the UN to step up and help provide stability in Syria, the official said.
“We’re not going to immediately withdraw but neither is the president willing to back a long-term commitment,” the official said.
Trump told a news conference on Tuesday with Baltic leaders that the US was very successful against Daesh but that “sometimes it’s time to come back home.”
Evacuation suspended
Meanwhile, evacuations from the rebel-held town of Douma near the Syrian capital were suspended on Thursday, days after hundreds of opposition fighters and their relatives left for areas of the country’s north as part of a surrender deal following a massive government offensive.
State news agency SANA said the suspension was the result of disagreements within the Army of Islam rebel group, adding that buses that entered Douma for the evacuations on Thursday returned without passengers.
Separately, regime forces are gathering around a southern part of Damascus ahead of a planned operation against Daesh there, a war monitor said.
Daesh fighters have controlled large parts of the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk and sections of the neighboring districts of Hajjar Al-Aswad and Tadamun in the capital’s south since 2015.
Last month, they overran the adjacent Qadam neighborhood, taking advantage of Syrian troops being busy with an operation against rebels in Eastern Ghouta.
“Since Sunday, reinforcements of regime forces and loyalist fighters — especially Palestinians — have been sent to the south of Damascus, in preparation for a military offensive to end the Daesh presence in the capital,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said.
“Palestinian fighters will be at the forefront of any military advance on the Yarmuk camp,” observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Turkish warning
Turkey urged France not to “make the same mistake” as the US by sending troops to the Syrian town of Manbij, which Ankara has threatened to attack to dislodge Kurdish militia.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey would expand its offensive against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia to the town in north Syria.
Turkey’s pro-government Yeni Safak daily reported that France had deployed 50 soldiers to Manbij to support the YPG, while state-run Anadolu news agency said 100 French special forces were deployed at five bases in YPG-controlled areas of Syria.
Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said officials were looking into the reports and indicated Turkey would inform Paris of its opposition “if this is found to be true.”
He warned Paris: “Don’t make the same mistake as America.”