The United States said Monday it was no longer seeking to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, but renewed warnings it would not fund reconstruction unless the regime is “fundamentally different.”
James Jeffrey, the US special representative in Syria, said that Assad “needed to compromise as he had not yet won” the brutal seven-year war, estimating that some 100,000 foreign-backed armed opposition militants remained in Syria.
“We want to see a regime that is fundamentally different. It’s not regime change — we’re not trying to get rid of Assad,” Jeffrey said at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank on Monday.
According to Jeffrey, the US is not willing to give any money for reconstruction in Syria until Washington sees a significant push by Damascus to change politically.
“There is a strong readiness on the part of Western nations not to ante up money for that disaster unless we have some kind of idea that the government is ready to compromise and thus not create yet another horror in the years ahead,” he said.
Former president Barack Obama had called for Assad to go, although he doubted the wisdom of a robust US intervention in the complex Syrian war and kept a narrow military goal of defeating the Islamic State extremist group.
Iran Role
Meanwhile, Jeffrey said the United States accepted that Tehran would maintain some diplomatic role in the country.
But he also called for the ouster of Iranian forces, adding that the United States “wanted a Syria that does not wage chemical weapons attacks or torture its own citizens.”
He acknowledged, however, that the United States may not find an ally anytime soon in Syria, saying: “It doesn’t have to be a regime that we Americans would embrace as, say, qualifying to join the European Union if the European Union would take Middle Eastern countries.”
Jeffrey’s remarkscome just a week after he told reporters that the US will not be leaving Syria until there was an irreversible political process and a complete withdrawal of Iranian forces inside the country.
Source: Agencies
