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US Pullout From At Tanf in Syria to Be Conditions-Based, Senior Official Says

CC0 / Staff Sgt. Jacob Connor / 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne)Members of 5th Special Forces Group (A) conducting 50. Cal Weapons training during counter ISIS operations at Al Tanf Garrison in southern Syria.
Members of 5th Special Forces Group (A) conducting 50. Cal Weapons training during counter ISIS operations at Al Tanf Garrison in southern Syria. - Sputnik International
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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Syria’s At Tanf region will be the last place in the country that US troops leave as they implement a planned withdrawal, a senior US administration official told reporters on Wednesday.

"In terms of Al Tanf — that is, in terms of the drawdown plans — Al-Tanf would be the last place that we would withdraw from, and I think that’s something that has not been scheduled; it would be conditions-based," the official said.

A serviceman of the Fighting Eagles 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, walks on a tank that arrived via train to the US base in Mihail Kogalniceanu, eastern Romania, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017. Five hundred U.S. troops began to arrive in a Black Sea port in Romania with tanks and hardware to bolster defense in this East European NATO nation. - Sputnik International
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A senior administration official also said that the United States will continue "being number one humanitarian donor to Syria" but will refrain from any efforts that would strengthen the leadership of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“We are going to stick to our current policy [on Assad] while being the number one humanitarian donor to Syria," the official said. "We are not going to do anything in terms of reconstruction that would bolster the regime absent fairly significant political concessions on the part of Assad."

The official said it would be "very hard" for the United States to envision any future for Syria in which Assad plays a responsible role.

"We are supporting the UN [peace] process. We very much hope for a brighter future for the Syrian people, but it’s hard for us to envision that with Assad at the helm," the official added.

US officials have repeatedly called for Assad to resign, and Washington has supported a variety of militant groups that have fought to topple his government.

Fighters from the SDF. (File) - Sputnik International
US Urges Allies to Take Back Daesh Terrorists Captured by Kurds in Syria
The United States also leads a coalition of more than 70 countries that is battling Daesh* terrorist group in Syria, though neither Assad nor the United Nations has authorized its operations.

Trump announced in December that US forces would soon leave Syria and declared the Daesh terror group defeated in the country.

In June 2017, the US president ended a covert CIA program to arm and train militants fighting to oust Assad. Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview in July 2017 that he canceled the CIA program after learning that it had supplied weapons to the Al-Qaeda* terrorist group.

*Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State) and Al-Qaeda are terrorist groups banned in US, Russia and many other countries.

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