Syria to US: Leave Iraq or Face Crisis
Press TV
If US President Barack Obama does not remedy the mistakes made by the Bush administration, he will face a serious crisis in the region within a year, Assad said in Vienna on Tuesday.
Up to “50 per cent of the problem” could be resolved by the quick withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, he added.
The Syrian president’s remarks comes amid reports of US-Iraqi negotiations about bypassing the security agreement between Baghdad and Washington, which calls for the withdrawal of US combat troops by June 30.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the top US commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno and the Iraqi defense minister, Abdul Qadir al-Obaidi, would meet to discuss possible exceptions to a deadline for withdrawing US troops.
The talks were expected to focus on the prospects of US combat troops remaining in the restive city of Mosul and some parts of Baghdad past the deadline outlined in the agreement between the two countries.
In October 2008, US military helicopters took off from Iraq, violated Syrian airspace and carried out a raid inside the country, killing eight civilians, including a father and his four children.
Officials in Washington said the helicopters had targeted a network of al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq. Damascus, however, condemned the strike as a “serious violation” of its territory.
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