(Zaman Al Wasl)- U.S. and Turkish military commanders have discussed the possibility of creating a "secure zone" along the border with Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday amid rising tensions over Turkish intervention in the area.
"Clearly we continue to talk to the Turks about the possibility of a secure zone, whatever you want to call it," Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told reporters.
"We've looked at that for a couple of years in various different iterations and no final decision on it yet. Our military commanders are still talking so I would say it's a concept that's out there ... it's simply an idea that's floating around right now."
McKenzie did not go into details about what a safe zone might entail, but Turkish media have said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told his Turkish counterpart Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that he supports creating a secure area that reaches 30 kilometers into Syria.
The brutal Syrian war, which has claimed more than 340,000 lives since 2011, has grown even more complex over the past week with Turkey launching a ground operation against Kurdish fighters in northern Afrin, close to the Turkish border.
That has heightened tensions with NATO member Turkey's Western allies - particularly the United States, which has backed the Kurdish YPG in their fight against Daesh (ISIS).
"Particularly in Afrin, Turkish operations ... that have the effect of inducing friction into the equation, of making it harder to focus on why we are in Syria ... are a negative thing," McKenzie said, adding that he understood
Turkey's "legitimate" security concerns.
A well-informed source told Zaman al-Wasl that the U.S. administration is not more interested in Afrin’s conflict in contrary to Donald Trump’s statement calling to avoid any engagement between the Turkish forces and teh US army.
There is an understanding over the territories of control where the US believes that Afrin is a Russian territory.
According to source, the American interest in the Kurdish militias has declined after the defeat of ISIS in most of eastern Syria.
Kurdish authorities in Afrin district called Thursday for Bashar Assad's regime to send troops to help defend them from a six-day-old Turkish assault, turning for help to the very government from which they have sought autonomy, Reuters reported.
The statement posted on the website of the Afrin authorities underscores the increasingly complex theatre of war in northern Syria, where Turkey's fight against a Kurdish militia threatens to scramble alliances in a seven-year-old conflict.
"We call on the Syrian state to carry out its sovereign obligations towards Afrin and protect its borders with Turkey from attacks of the Turkish occupier ... and deploy its Syrian armed forces to secure the borders of the Afrin area," the statement said. (With Reuters)
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