U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says he’s hopeful about a process that he calls “very hard”.
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The new plan comes as the USA, Russia, Iran and 15 other countries held an global meeting in Vienna, Austria, on Friday to resolve the years-long conflict in Syria.
In a rare hint of diplomatic progress, Iran signalled it would back a six-month political transition period in Syria followed by elections to decide Assad’s fate, although his foes rejected the proposal as a trick to keep Assad in power.
“We are intensifying our counter-Daesh campaign and we are intensifying our diplomatic efforts to end the conflict”, Kerry said.
The four-year-old war in Syria, which began with an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, has left 250 000 people dead and forced half the country’s population – or 11 million people – from their homes.
“It is out of the question to have our soldiers’ feet on the ground”, he said.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter hinted at a greater US involvement in remarks Tuesday.
“We are going to continue to innovate, to build up what works”, he said.
Co-operation with Russian Federation Speaking after the meeting, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that the United States decision to deploy special forces in Syria would make co-operation between the armed forces of the two countries more important. Syria itself was not represented.
Friday’s developments came as missiles slammed into a crowded suburb of the Syrian capital.
Underscoring the perils facing those fleeing the war, 26 migrants, including at least 17 children, drowned during the night making the perilous journey from Turkey to Greece as they made a desperate bid to reach Europe.
In addition to the troops heading to Syria, Mr Obama also authorised the deployment of A-10s and F-15s to Incirlik air base in Turkey, a United States official told Reuters. It helped Iraqi forces rescue hostages last week, and Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler was killed, the first USA combat death in that country since 2011.
Russian Federation says it is bombing Islamic State, but most of its air strikes have hit other groups opposed to Assad, including many that are supported by Washington’s allies.
“The mantra for both sides is that there has to be a political solution”, Landis said.
On Capitol Hill, a few lawmakers greeted the troop announcement with dismay.
It “marks a major shift in USA policy – a shift that is occurring without congressional debate (and) is unlikely to succeed in achieving our objective of defeating IS”, said Sen.
One of the groups the US troops will be working with is a Kurdish militia known as the YPG, which could pose a political problem for the United States.
The YPG was accused of war crimes in a recent report by Amnesty worldwide, which documented allegations that the group forcibly displaced Arabs and Turkmen and burned down villages perceived as cooperating with its opponents.
The Obama administration is deploying several dozen special operations forces inside Syria for the first time in a significant escalation of the fight against the radical Islamic State group.
The Vienna talks took place exactly one month into Russia’s bold military intervention on behalf of the Assad regime, which had been losing ground to the rebels in previous months.
Kerry said the U.N.-led process should lead to a new constitution for Syria and internationally supervised elections, as well as an end to violence between Assad’s military and Sunni rebel groups so the world community can focus on the fight against the Islamic State.
But in Vienna there was no agreement over the future of Assad.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: “I am sure that the principles formulated today in our common statement allow us to start work in a serious way”.
