Kurds begin to exit northern Syria

After militias help rout ISIS, Turkey warns against advances

Turkish tanks take position Thursday in Karkamis near the Syrian border after a U.S.-backed offensive by Kurdish militias and Syrian rebels recaptured the border town of Jarablus on Wednesday.
Turkish tanks take position Thursday in Karkamis near the Syrian border after a U.S.-backed offensive by Kurdish militias and Syrian rebels recaptured the border town of Jarablus on Wednesday.

ISTANBUL -- Kurdish-led forces in Syria have started withdrawing east of the Euphrates River, U.S. and Turkish officials said Thursday, one day after Turkish forces and allied rebels opened an offensive on the Islamic State-held border city of Jarablus.

The operation routed the extremists from the area but also Turkish leaders and others warned Kurdish militias against further advances in northern Syria. Vice President Joe Biden, visiting Ankara, had threatened to pull U.S. support if the Kurdish fighters stayed in areas Turkey says pose a threat to its national security.

Many of Syria's Kurds, whose militias have proved one of the most effective fighting forces against the Islamic State, want to forge a new autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria adjoining the Turkish border.

To better secure the border, Turkey sent at least 10 more tanks into northern Syria on Thursday, Turkey's private Dogan news agency reported.

Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said Thursday that the military operation has two main goals: "securing the Turkish border" and preventing Kurdish fighters from establishing a foothold along the frontier.

He said Turkey and the U.S. have agreed that the Syrian Kurdish forces would pull out of the northern area around Jarablus within a week.

"For now, the withdrawal hasn't fully taken place. We are waiting for it and following it," he told the private NTV television station.

"It's important to U.S. credibility" that the Kurds do not move west of the Euphrates to link their strongholds, Isik said. Turkey has long feared that an autonomous Kurdish enclave in Syria would inspire its own Kurdish population to demand more independence. Turkish troops and Kurdish guerrillas have fought a decadeslong war over Kurdish demands for autonomy in Turkey.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces have moved east across the Euphrates to prepare for the eventual liberation of Raqqa, Syria," the U.S. military spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve said Thursday, referring to the Islamic State's declared capital.

The Democratic Forces is a Kurdish-led force backed by the United States to fight the Islamic State in Syria, and recently liberated the northern Syrian town of Manbij from Islamic State fighters. The People's Protection Units is the Kurds' primary fighting force in the country.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also spoke by telephone with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to alert Turkey of the withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Turkish troops and tanks initially crossed into Syria on Wednesday in support of a new U.S.-backed offensive against the Islamic State, helping Syrian rebels swiftly to recapture Jarablus.

Jarablus was the last of the once many Syrian-Turkish border crossings controlled by the Islamic State, and its loss will curtail significantly the flow of foreign fighters and supplies to its territories elsewhere, including Raqqa, said Col. John Dorrian, a U.S. military spokesman.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu agency, reporting from Jarablus, said the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces were working to secure the city to allow its residents to return, including defusing explosives inside the town or on roads leading to it. Estimates put the city's population at 25,000.

"We were greeted in Jarablus by civilians with flowers, and there was a lot of joy among the people," said Brig. Seif Abu Bakr, a commander with the Faylaq al-Sham rebel battalion. "People are now returning to the city."

U.S., Russia to meet

The fight against the Islamic State is just one of many facets to Syria's civil war, which has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced. International negotiators have worked for years to end fighting between the disparate groups and the Syrian government.

President Barack Obama's administration is beginning a fresh bid to enlist Russia as a partner in Syria as the situation inside the country becomes more volatile and uncertain.

Kerry will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week to try to hammer out a diplomatic initiative that would see greater cooperation that could lead to a resumption in talks on a political transition.

Before talks can begin, though, U.S. officials say it is imperative that Russia use its influence with Syrian President Bashar Assad to halt attacks on moderate opposition forces, open humanitarian-aid corridors, and concentrate any offensive action on the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

Russia's U.N. ambassador said Thursday that there doesn't have to be a confrontation with the United States over a report that blames the Syrian government and Islamic State militants for carrying out chemical attacks.

Ambassador Vitaly Churkin responded to predictions of confrontation by stressing that the U.S. and Russia created the investigative body to determine those responsible for chemical attacks in Syria.

"It doesn't have to be the case," he told reporters, downplaying the predictions. "We have a joint interest in discouraging such things from happening, in preventing such things from happening."

Churkin called the 95-page document produced by the international team from the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons "a very complicated report which needs to be studied by experts."

He said it was "very important" that the team said definitively that Islamic State extremists were responsible for an attack using mustard gas "because usually all talk we heard about any use of chemical weapons was an effort to ascribe things to the Syrian government."

Churkin sidestepped questions about the team's conclusion that the Syrian government used chlorine gas in two attacks, reiterating that the report is "very technical," "quite complicated" and needs study.

The United States, which backs Syria's moderate opposition groups, made clear after the report was circulated among Security Council members Wednesday that the Syrian government has now been found responsible of using a chemical weapon in violation of a Security Council resolution and its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

"It is now impossible to deny that the Syrian regime has repeatedly used industrial chlorine as a weapon against its own people," U.S. National Security Adviser Ned Price said in a statement.

Information for this article was contributed by Erin Cunningham and Heba Habib of The Washington Post; by Suzan Fraser, Sarah El Deeb, Mucahit Ceylan, Philip Issa, Zeina Karam and Jamey Keaten, Matthew Lee, Edith M. Lederer and staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/26/2016

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