US vows to stop arming Syrian Kurds

ANKARA: The United States will cut off its supply of arms to Kurdish fighters in Syria, a move by President Donald Trump that is sure to please Turkey but further alienate Syrian Kurds who bore much of the fight against the Daesh militant group.

In a phone call on Friday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump said he’d “given clear instructions” that the Kurds will receive no more weapons - “and that this nonsense should have ended a long time ago,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

“It is our most natural right to expect Trump to keep his promise,” Cavusoglu said in televised comments in the southern Mediterranean resort of Antalya.

“Naturally, as I said yesterday, we want to see this applied,” he added.

The White House confirmed the move in a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of “pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria.”

The White House called the move “consistent with our previous policy” and noted the recent fall of Raqqa.

“We are progressing into a stabilisation phase to ensure that Daesh cannot return,” the White House said.

Separately, the Pentagon is likely to announce in the coming days that there are about 2,000 US troops in Syria, two US officials said on Friday, as the military acknowledges that an accounting system for troops has under-reported the size of forces on the ground.

They said there was always a possibility that last minute changes in schedules could delay an announcement.