But it is not expected to immediately give new momentum to a slow-moving – a few would say stalled – American-led campaign against the Islamic State.
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The defense ministry also said progress had been made in talks with the Pentagon on avoiding accidents in Syrian airspace, as a US-led coalition is conducting a separate bombing campaign.
The administration is under heavy criticism in Congress for a flawed approach in Syria, amplified by Russia’s muscular moves to launch ship-based cruise missile strikes and deploy fighter aircraft and battlefield weaponry – actions that caught the U.S.by surprise and underscored the failure of the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip rebels.
“Adjusting one programme, even if it were successful, will not solve the problem”.
If Assad is staying and there’s no political process in sight, this argument goes, the USA might as well focus on alleviating the suffering of the Syrian people and mitigate the growing refugee crisis.
In the same statement, Carter said he remained “convinced that a lasting defeat of ISIL in Syria will depend in part on the success of local, motivated, and capable ground forces”.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter speaks during a press conference held with Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon, at Lancaster house in London, Friday, October 9, 2015.
Reports on Friday said IS had seized several villages near the northern city of Aleppo from rival insurgents.
USA officials have said the new effort would focus more on embedding recruits with established Kurdish and Arab units, rather than sending them directly into front-line combat. Initial tight restrictions limited the number of volunteers who could join the training program, and those who did were se underprepared when the USA sent them back into the fight.
Reuters reported last week that the Obama administration was considering extending support to thousands of Syrian rebel fighters, including along a stretch of the Turkey-Syria border, as part of the revamped approach to Syria. Moscow’s intervention has cast doubt on Obama’s strategy there and raised questions about USA influence in the region.
They would be equipped with USA communications gear and trained to provide intelligence and to designate Islamic State targets for airstrikes in coordination with US troops outside of Syria, officials said.
Administration officials sought to discourage the idea that the training effort was ending.
“If that’s your guiding principle, it helps explain why they might look for a positive initially in what Russia’s doing”, he said. The congressional authorization for the train and equip program required that the US-trained rebels pledge only to fight IS and was unpopular with many rebels for that reason, Syrian opposition sources say.
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The United States will supply arms, equipment and air support to Syrian Arab and Kurdish groups already fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) on the ground in Syria, the White House and Pentagon announced October 9.
