{"id":26074,"date":"2018-12-19T01:22:48","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T01:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26074"},"modified":"2018-12-19T01:22:48","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T01:22:48","slug":"us-accepts-assad-staying-in-syria-but-will-not-give-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26074","title":{"rendered":"US accepts Assad staying in Syria \u2014 but will not give aid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nWASHINGTON:\u00a0The US 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 \u201cfundamentally different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nJames Jeffrey, the US special representative in Syria, said that Assad needed to compromise as he had not yet won the brutal seven-year civil war, estimating that some 100,000 armed opposition fighters remained in Syria.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe want to see a regime that is fundamentally different. It\u2019s not regime change \u2014\u00a0 we\u2019re not trying to get rid of Assad,\u201d Jeffrey said at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.<\/p>\n

\nEstimating that Syria would need $300-400 billion to rebuild, Jeffrey warned that Western powers and international financial institutions would not commit funds without a change of course.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThere 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nFormer 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 Daesh extremist group.<\/p>\n

\nPresident Donald Trump\u2019s administration has acknowledged, if rarely so explicitly, that Assad is likely to stay.<\/p>\n

\nBut Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned in October that the US would not provide \u201cone single dollar\u201d for Syria\u2019s reconstruction if Iran stays.<\/p>\n

\nJeffrey also called for the ouster of Iranian forces, whose presence is strongly opposed by neighboring Israel, although he said the US accepted that Tehran would maintain some diplomatic role in the country.<\/p>\n

\nJeffrey also said that the US wanted a Syria that does not wage chemical weapons attacks or torture its own citizens.<\/p>\n

\nHe acknowledged, however, that the US may not find an ally anytime soon in Syria, saying: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON:\u00a0The US 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 \u201cfundamentally different.\u201d James Jeffrey, the US special representative in Syria, said that Assad needed to compromise as he had not yet won the brutal seven-year civil war, estimating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}