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