US Defense Secretary Mark Esper has paid an unannounced visit to Baghdad for high-level talks, days after Washington withdrew its military forces from Syria into Iraq.
Esper is expected to address the matter in meetings with Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi as well as his Iraqi counterpart, Najah Hassan Ali al-Shammari, on Wednesday.
More than 100 US military vehicles crossed into Iraq from northeastern Syria on Monday. The redeployment followed US President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw all American troops from northeastern Syria.
Speaking in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Esper said he planned to hold talks with Iraqi authorities regarding the redeployment.
He said US troops will be stationed in Iraq “temporarily,” and that Washington sought to “eventually get them home.”
This is while he had said last week that the nearly 1,000 troops withdrawing from northern Syria were expected to move to western Iraq to allegedly continue the campaign against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group and “to help defend Iraq.”
Those comments prompted a stern response from the Iraqi military, which said in a statement that US forces crossing into Iraq as part of a pullout from Syria were not allowed to stay on Iraqi soil.
Washington has currently 5,200 troops based in Iraq on a purported mission to fight the Daesh terror group, which collapsed in the Arab country in late 2017.
Trump had earlier raised anger and concerns in Iraq by saying that Washington’s presence in the country was meant to “keep an eye” on neighboring Iran.
Source: Agencies
