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Russia, Iran and Turkey support US forces leaving Syria

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Russia, Turkey and Iran said the withdrawal of US forces from Syria is “a positive step” that would help strengthen Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Thursday for discussions about the future of Syria.

Putin said they agreed that the US pull-out from Syria “would be a positive step that would help stabilise the situation in this region, where ultimately the legitimate government should re-establish control”. Rohani told the news conference that the US presence in Syria and other countries was not useful.

At the end of a trilateral meeting the leaders released a joint statement that “denounced and expressed serious concern with the attempts of the terrorist organisation ‘Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’ to increase its control over the [Idlib de-escalation] area, and agreed to effectively counter these attempts”.

There was no mention in the statement of President Erdogan’s plan to establish a “safe zone” in north-east Syria. Instead, the three leaders agreed to coordinate their activities in the area to: “Ensure security, safety and stability including through existing agreements, while respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country”.

The three leaders also agreed to: “Facilitate the launch of the Constitutional Committee as soon as possible, including by agreeing on its composition and elaborating recommendations for its rules of procedure”. The summit is the fourth of its kind since Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan first met in Sochi in 2017.

The Independent reports that dozens of ISIS members have surrendered over the past few days as the group has been reduced to a few dozen tents in the village of Baghouz, in Deir ez-Zor. Some 1,600 women and children, most of whom are thought to be family members of jihadists, remain in the last area under ISIS control, according to the Syrian Democratic Forces, the US-backed force leading the fight against the terrorist group.

Adnan Afrin, the Syrian Democratic Forces commander in charge of the last offensive against ISIS, told the Rojava Information Centre: “The operation is coming toward an end, and the eradication of ISIS. Two days ago we were talking about kilometres, yesterday we said a square kilometre, but today it’s even less. Now, we talk about hundreds of square metres.”