In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talks about ISIS in Syria, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and…
In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talks about ISIS in Syria, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a newly announced plan for dealing with migrants crossing the U. S. southern border.
Steve Inskeep: Is ISIS defeated?
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: We’ve made the caliphate in Syria go away. We remember, you remember this, Steve, you remember cells with people in them being burned. The president made an enormous commitment to take down the caliphate. And that has been achieved. We now have the battle that is a longtime battle which is a counterterrorism battle not only against ISIS but against Al-Qaida and others — HTS, all the terrorist groups. President Trump remains just as committed today as he was yesterday and the day before and the progress that the Trump administration has made in defeating ISIS in Syria is extraordinary, and we’re very proud of that accomplishment.
When U. S. troops leave eastern Syria, of course U. S. allies, Kurdish groups, will remain in eastern Syria. What obligations does the United States have to its Kurdish allies?
Here at the State Department we’ve been working diligently for a long time, including the entirety of my time in service here, to achieve the U. N. process led by Staffan de Mistura and now by his successor to get a political outcome in Syria that takes down the threat, the threat of violence, that attempts to create the conditions for what is now over 6 million displaced persons, some of them internal to Syria, some of them in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. We are committed to that. Ambassador Jeffrey is hard at work trying to implement…
Jim Jeffrey is the envoy for Syria.
… the special envoy for Syria, is today hard at work trying to deliver against the U. N. commitments. We’re counting on the Russians. We’re counting on the Turks. We’re counting on each of those parties to honor their commitments to this U. N. Security Council resolution. And the United States will continue to those diplomatic efforts.
Well let’s talk about the Russians and the Turks. The Turks, who of course have been hostile to the Kurds, have already said they’re preparing to move into eastern Syria. The Russians have said…
A lot of history Steve. You shouldn’t enter. You shouldn’t enter that debate today.
Would you warn the Turks against attacking the United States?
The history between the Turks, the history between the Turks and the… just, we have to, there’s a lot of history, Steve, some folks want to just talk about what happened this morning. The history between the Turks and the Kurdish is a long one. It is a complicated one and the United States is deeply aware of the set of relationships there. And we have a very clear mission set. Our mission set in Syria was the defeat of the ISIS caliphate. We continue to push back against ISIS in West Africa, in Afghanistan, all across the world. That threat certainly is out there, the president has acknowledged that. He has also acknowledged the administration’s continued commitment to that defeat, something that the previous administration could not accomplish.
But I’m asking about something a little different here. The Russian Foreign Ministry has said in the last day that the withdrawal of U. S. troops creates good prospects for a peaceful solution and they gave the example of Aleppo, where the Syrian government backed by Russia went and destroyed U.
