Alwaght- The United States has made a major policy shift on Syria by announcing that it will no longer seek the ouster of the country’s president Bashar al Assad.
Speaking in Ankara on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Assad's longer-term status "will be decided by the Syrian people."
Tillerson was in Ankara meeting with his Turkish colleague Mevlut Cavusoglu where they discussed Turkey’s support for the US-led coalition supposedly combatting ISIS terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.
The US ambassador to the United Nations also echoed Tillerson’s remarks by saying Washington’s priority is no longer based on removing Syrian president Assad from power.
Ambassador Nikki Haley told a small group of reporters on Thursday that, "Our priority is to really look at how do we get things done, who do we need to work with to really make a difference for the people in Syria."
"You pick and choose your battles and when we're looking at this, it's about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out," Haley said.
"Do we think he's a hindrance? Yes. Are we going to sit there and focus on getting him out? No," she said adding that, “What we are going to focus on is putting the pressure in there so that we can start to make a change in Syria."
Meanwhile, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, in separate statements, condemned the shift in the US stance.
Since 2011, when the conflict in Syria began, Washington has insisted that “Assad must go” as the only acceptable solution for peace in the country.
The US has provided weapons and training to what it called “moderate rebels” in Syria, ostensibly so they could fight IS rather than the government.
Leaving the State Department in January, now former Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged that the Obama administration planned to oust Assad’s government by supporting the rebels, but “that whole ball game changed” when Russia intervened in September 2015.
