Jordan To Host Arab, Turkish, US, EU Diplomats For Syria Summit
Date
12/13/2024 4:06:05 AM
(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Jordan will host a Syria crisis summit over the weekend with participation of foreign ministers from numerous Western and Arab nations, Amman's foreign Ministry announced Thursday.
The Saturday summit "to discuss developments in Syria" will include top diplomats from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar, who will also convene with their Turkish and US counterparts, the EU's foreign policy chief and the UN envoy for Syria, the statement said.
Blinken meets Erdogan
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed straight into talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after landing in Ankara Thursday, a US official said.
Washington's top diplomat flew in from the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba where he kicked off a regional tour yesterday to discuss fallout from the ouster of Syria's Bashar al-Assad.
Turkey was expected to put heavy emphasis on its security concerns following the upheaval in Syria, where it has been fighting a Kurdish-led force that Washington backs as a key player in the fight against Islamic State (IS) group.
Before leaving Aqaba, Blinken said the role of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was "critical" to preventing a resurgence of IS in the country.
"At a time when we want to see this transition... to a better way forward for Syria, part of that also has to be ensuring that ISIS doesn't rear its ugly head again," Blinken said on a visit to Jordan.
"Critical to making sure that doesn't happen are the so-called SDF - the Syrian Democratic Forces," he added.
But US support for the SDF - the de facto army of the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration that controls much of Syria's northeast - has put it sharply at odds with Ankara.
Turkiye views the force as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, effectively blacklisting the SDF as a terror outfit.
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