US has had direct contact with Syrian rebel group, Blinken says

By Jennifer Hansler, CNN

Aqaba, Jordan (CNN) — The United States has had direct contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Syrian rebel group now in de-facto control of the country, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday.

The first public confirmation of direct interaction with the US-designated terrorist group, known as HTS, came at the conclusion of Blinken’s diplomatic sprint through the region spurred by the sudden collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“Yes, we’ve been in contact with HTS and the other parties,” Blinken said at a news conference in Aqaba, Jordan. Blinken did not give details on when the contact was made or at what level. There is no legal barrier to speaking with a designated terrorist group.

“We have pressed upon everyone we’ve been in contact with the importance of helping find Austin Tice and bringing him home,” Blinken said, referencing the American journalist who was detained in Syria more than a decade ago. The US has redoubled its efforts to find him in the wake of the Assad regime’s collapse.

The US also shared the principles expected of a new Syrian government, including that the rights of all Syrians should be respected, that the country must not become a base for terrorism, that humanitarian aid must be delivered, and that chemical weapons stockpiles should be secured and safely destroyed.

Those principles, circulated by the US in the days after Assad’s shocking ouster, were further agreed upon in a joint statement by the US and a coalition of other countries at an urgent ministerial meeting in Aqaba on Saturday. Blinken said the agreement “sends a unified message to the new interim authority and parties in Syria.”

Ahead of the Saturday ministerial meeting, Blinken met with key partners in Jordan, Turkey and Iraq to garner consensus around the principles.

“America and our partners have an important stake in helping the Syrian people chart this new path,” the top US diplomat said Saturday. “We know what happens inside of Syria can have powerful consequences well beyond its borders — from mass displacement to terrorism.”

“We can’t underestimate the challenges of this moment and the weeks and months ahead,” he added.

Throughout his trip, Blinken sought to emphasize those stakes. Moving forward, the dynamics on the ground in the region could present significant complications, despite a consensus on the principles.

There was an intense spate of fighting in recent weeks in northern Syria between Turkish-backed forces and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which the US sees as a key partner in the fight to keep ISIS degraded.

A fragile truce between the two sides in Manbij appears to be holding, but the fighting forced the SDF to halt its anti-ISIS operations, according to its top commander.

“This is a moment of vulnerability in which ISIS will seek to regroup, taking the advantage of transition in Syria,” Blinken said Saturday, reemphasizing the importance of the SDF.

In meetings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara, Blinken warned the US does not want to see any party take actions that would allow ISIS to regroup, including by distracting the SDF from its mission to keep the terrorist group degraded and its fighters imprisoned, a US official said. Blinken also emphasized that nobody should take actions that could jeopardize factions in Syria from potentially coming together in a unified government.

In Baghdad, Blinken asked Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to crack down on the powerful Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and to prevent Iran from transiting weapons through Iraq to Shia militias in Syria, the US official said. Such militias have targeted US personnel and interests in the past.

The response to Israel’s actions in Syria has also emerged as point of division between the US and its Arab partners.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has pummeled Syria with strikes and sent Israeli troops to — and beyond — a “buffer zone” between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria, in what the United Nations said would be a violation of a 1974 agreement. Middle Eastern nations including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar have condemned Israel’s seizure of the buffer zone, calling it an attempted land grab.

The US, however, has not condemned the move, with Blinken saying that they are talking with the Israeli government.

“The stated purpose of those actions from the Israelis is to try to make sure that equipment that’s been abandoned — military equipment that’s been abandoned by the Syrian army — doesn’t fall into the wrong hands: terrorists, extremists, etc.,” he said Thursday. “But … we’re already talking with Israel; we’re all talking to others about the way ahead.”

A US official said Friday that Blinken intends to make clear to his Arab counterparts that Israel told the US that the incursion is temporary — and that the US expects it to be. That policy could change, however, next month when the Trump administration takes office, this official conceded.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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