No Go-Ahead on Turkish Operation: Pompeo

• 10.10.2019, 13:02
•  America,  Near East,  World

Yuri Gripas/Reuters

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington did not give Ankara "a green light" for a military offensive into Syria, Al-Jazeera reports.

"That's just false," he said in an interview with PBS channel, but did not elaborate other than to say that Turkey has a "legitimate security concern". 

"They have a terrorist threat to their south," Pompeo said. "We've been working to make sure that we did what we could do to prevent that terror threat from striking the people in Turkey while trying to achieve what is in America's best interest: the threat from radical Islamic terrorism emanating from Syria."

Pompeo said the US was leaving Syria because it had achieved its goal of eliminating ISIL's control of the territory, which the SDF had played an instrumental part in.

"We'll continue to be in a position to do what we need to do to keep the American people as safe as we possibly can from this threat," he said.