Adviser indicates long stay for troops while president claims he never said withdrawal would be quick

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

US troops will not leave north-eastern Syria until Islamic State militants are defeated and US-allied Kurdish fighters protected, national security adviser John Bolton said on Sunday, signaling a pause to a withdrawal abruptly announced last month and initially expected to be completed within weeks. Achieving such conditions will likely take months or even years.

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

In Washington, Donald Trump said: “We won’t be finally pulled out until Isis is gone.” That was a reversal from his announcement on 19 December, when the president said US forces had “defeated Isis in Syria, my only reason for being there”, and said in a video posted to Twitter: “Now it’s time for our troops to come back home.”

Bolton was in Jerusalem, and was due to fly on to Turkey in pursuit of an agreement to protect Kurdish militias. In Washington, Trump told reporters at the White House: “We are pulling back in Syria. We’re going to be removing our troops. I never said we’re doing it that quickly.”

But in that 19 December video, the president said of the roughly 2,000 US troops in Syria: “They’re all coming back, and they’re coming back now.” Officials said at the time they expected American forces to be out by mid-January.

One key presidential ally greeted the new goals.

“I think this is the reality setting in that you got to plan this out,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina.

He told CBS’ Face the Nation that “the bottom line here is we want to make sure we get this right, that Isis doesn’t come back. And I applaud the president for re-evaluating what he’s doing … He has a goal in mind of reducing our presence. I share that goal. Let’s just do it smartly.”

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Trump’s original decision drew widespread criticism, led to the resignation of defense secretary Jim Mattis and raised fears of 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.

“There are objectives that we want to accomplish that condition the withdrawal,” Bolton told reporters in Jerusalem on Sunday. “The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement.”

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He was scheduled to be in Turkey on Monday, accompanied by the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Joseph Dunford. Bolton said the US wanted its Kurdish allies protected from any Turkish offensive.

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

Bolton said Trump has made clear he will not allow Turkey to kill the Kurds: “That’s what the president said, the ones that fought with us.”

The US has asked the Kurds to “stand fast now”, he said, and refrain from seeking protection from Russia or Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. “I think they know who their friends are,” Bolton added.

Jim Jeffrey, the special representative for Syrian engagement and the newly named special envoy for the anti-Isis coalition, will travel to Syria in an effort to reassure the Kurdish fighters, Bolton said.

Turkey’s presidential spokesman called allegations that his country planned to attack the US-allied Kurds in Syria “irrational”. But 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 Isis.

“That a terror organization cannot be allied with the US is self-evident,” he said.

Representative Adam Smith, the new chair of the House armed services committee, told ABC’s This Week the conditions raised by Bolton were “obvious”. He also criticized 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 [Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan in Turkey,” said Smith.

The US is also seeking a “satisfactory disposition” for roughly 800 Isis prisoners held by the US-backed Syrian opposition, Bolton said, adding that talks were ongoing with European and regional partners about the issue.

Bolton was to have dinner with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday, to discuss the US drawdown, American troops in the region and the US commitment to push back Iranian expansionism. He was expected to explain that some US troops based in Syria to fight Isis will shift to Iraq with the same mission.

Bolton also was to convey the message that the US is “very supportive” of Israeli strikes against Iranian targets in Syria, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to publicly discuss Bolton’s plans.