Trump Rules out Leaving Any Troops in 'dangerous' Syria

Washington, Oct 21 (PTI) US President Donald Trump on Monday ruled out leaving any troops in Syria, which he described as a "dangerous" country.

"I don't think it's going to be necessary," Trump told reporters at the White House during his Cabinet meeting when asked if he will leave a limited number of troops in Syria.

"I don't want to leave any troops there. That's very dangerous territory. You know, we have 28 troops as it turned out. They said 50, it was 28. And you have an army on both sides of those troops. Those troops would have been wiped out," Trump said.

The president said troops in the region were not necessary, other than for securing oil investments. "It's a little different section, but we need to secure the oil," Trump said.

"The other region where we've been asked by Israel and Jordan to leave a small number of troops is a totally different section of Syria, near Jordan, and close to Israel. And that's a totally different section. That's a totally different mindset. So we have a small group there, and we secured the oil. Other than that, there's no reason for it, in our opinion," he said.

Stating that the US will be "watching" the Kurds and at the same time working with them, the president said the United States has a good relationship with the Kurds, but never agreed to protect them forever.

"We supported them for three-and-a-half, four years. We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives. Remember this: When Iraq was fighting the Kurds, everybody thought we were going to fight with the Kurds," he said.

"I said, 'Well, it's a little strange that we're going to fight for the Kurds when we just spent USD 4 trillion on Iraq, and now we're going to be fighting Iraq.' So what I did is I said, 'We're not going to take a position. Let them fight themselves. I thought the Kurds would do very well.' Iraq moved in and the Kurds left," Trump said.

"They didn't fight because they didn't have us to fight with them. A lot of people are good when they fight with us, you know, when you have USD 10 billion worth of airplanes shooting 10 miles in front of your line, it's much easier to fight," he added.

"But with that, they were a good help, but we were a great help to them too. They were fighting ISIS. You know, they hated ISIS. So they were fighting ISIS. But we never agreed — where's the agreement that said we have to stay in the Middle East for the rest of humanity, for the rest of civilization to protect the Kurds. We never said that," asserted Trump.

"I hope they're going to watch over ISIS because again, most of it's not in the safe zone as we call. Some places call it a demilitarised zone. And our relationship with the Kurds is good. And they're going to be safe," he said.

"And I will say this: If shooting didn't start in a couple of days, I don't think the Kurds would have moved, I don't think, frankly, we would have been able to make a very easy deal with Turkey," Trump said.

"I think when it started for a few days, it was so nasty, that when we went to Turkey and we went to the Kurds, they agreed to do things they would've never done before the shooting started. If they didn't go through two-and-a-half days of hell, I don't think they would have done it," he said.

"I think you couldn't have made a deal, and people have been trying to make this deal for years. But we're close to making it. We'll see what happens. Again, they've been fighting for 300 years that we know of. Three hundred years. So why should we put our soldiers in the midst of two large groups, hundreds of thousands, potentially, of people, and they're fighting? I don't think so," Trump said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)