Trump adviser outlines conditions for US pull-out from Syria

JERUSALEM (AP):

President Donald Trump's national security adviser said, yesterday, that the American military withdrawal from north eastern Syria is conditioned on defeating the remnants of the Islamic State group and on Turkey assuring the safety of US-allied Kurdish fighters.

John Bolton said there is no timetable for the pullout, but insisted the military presence is not an unlimited commitment.

"There are objectives that we want to accomplish that condition the withdrawal," Bolton told reporters in Jerusalem before heading to Turkey on Monday, where he will be joined by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Joseph Dunford. "The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement."

Those conditions, he said, included defeating what's left of IS in Syria and protecting Kurdish militias who have fought alongside US troops against the extremist group.

Bolton's comments were the first public confirmation that the draw down has been slowed. Trump had faced widespread criticism from allies about his decision, announced in mid-December, that he was pulling all 2,000 US troops from Syria. Officials said, at the time, that although many details of the withdrawal had not yet been finalised, they expected American forces to be out by mid-January.

"We're pulling out of Syria," Trump said yesterday at the White House. "But we're doing it and we won't be finally pulled out until ISIS is gone."

Trump's move, which led to the resignation of US Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, has raised fears over clearing the way for a Turkish assault on the Kurdish fighters. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, a terrorist group linked to an insurgency within its own borders.

Bolton said the US is insisting that its Kurdish allies in Syria are protected from any planned Turkish offensives a warning he was expected to deliver to Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this week.

"We don't think the Turks ought to undertake military action that's not fully coordinated with and agreed to by the United States," Bolton said. He said that in upcoming meetings with Turkish officials he will seek "to find out what their objectives and capabilities are and that remains uncertain."

Trump has made clear that he would not allow Turkey to kill the Kurds, Bolton said. "That's what the president said, the ones that fought with us."

Bolton said the US has asked the Kurds to "stand fast now" and refrain from seeking protection from Russia or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government. "I think they know who their friends are," he added, speaking of the Kurds.

Jim Jeffrey, the special representative for Syrian engagement and the newly named American special envoy for the anti-Islamic State coalition, is to travel to Syria this coming week in an effort to reassure the Kurdish fighters that they are not being abandoned, Bolton said.

Turkey's presidential spokesman called allegations that his country planned to attack the US-allied Kurds in Syria "irrational" and said Turkey was fighting terrorism for national security.

In comments carried by the official Anadolu news agency, Ibrahim Kalin, said the Kurdish fighters oppressed Syrian Kurds and pursued a separatist agenda under the guise of fighting IS.

"That a terror organisation cannot be allied with the US is self-evident," he said.

US Rep Adam Smith, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told ABC's "This Week" that the conditions raised by Bolton were "obvious," and Smith criticised the conflicting messages from the Trump administration.

"We don't want ISIS to rise again and be a transnational terrorist threat and we don't want our allies, the Kurds, to be slaughtered by Erdogan in Turkey," said Smith, D-Wash.

Bolton said US troops would remain at the critical area of al-Tanf, in southern Syria, to counter growing Iranian activity in the region. He defended the legal basis for the deployment, saying it's justified by the president's constitutional authority.