Tabnak - In successive statements showing a great shift away from Barak Obama’s policy on Syria, two high-ranking US officials signaled a willingness to consider a role for Syrian President Bashar Assad in the future of the war-torn country. The move has sparked the reaction of Syrian opposition and hawkish US republicans alike.
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, declared Thursday that the Trump administration does not consider it a priority that Syrian President Bashar Assad be removed from power.
"Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out," Haley told a small group of journalists, Reuters reported. "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."
"We can't necessarily focus on Assad the way that the previous administration did," Haley added.
Earlier on the day, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during his official visit to Turkey that the future of the Bashar Assad government "will be decided by the Syrian people.”
During a press conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, Tillerson explained that the U.S. faced "difficult choices” when it came to Syria. Then one of the reporters followed up.
"About President Assad, should he stay or should he go?” the reporter asked. "I think the… longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people,” Tillerson said.
However, these positions taken by the US officials seem to have angered some people both inside and outside the US. According to the Washington Examiner, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are upset with the Trump administration signaling that removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power is no longer a top priority.
In a statement Thursday evening, McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he is "deeply disturbed" by Tillerson's and Haley's comments.
Graham, also a member of the Armed Services committee, said that such comments would be "the biggest mistake since President Obama failed to act after drawing a red line against Assad's use of chemical weapons."
At the same time, the Syrian opposition said Thursday it rejected "any role” now or in the future for the Syrian President Bashar Assad. "The opposition will never accept any role for Bashar al-Assad at any phase... there will be no change in our position,” said Monzer Makhos, a spokesman for the opposition High Negotiations Committee, composed of some Syrian opposition groups in Geneva.
In a report of the story CNN notes that If the US does definitively abandon the policy of requiring Assad's departure -- a position articulated by the Obama administration -- it would put its policy closer in line with Russia, which supports Assad, and at odds with allies in Europe and in Turkey, where Tillerson downplayed frictions that are already straining that alliance.
The idea of leaving Assad’s future up to the Syrian voters was previously pushed both by the Syrian government and also by Iran and Russia, and had been scoffed at by most Western countries, who were insisting heavily on regime change as the result of the war.
