BEIRUT, LEBANON (6:20 A.M.) – US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said that the US was ‘tremendously concerned about the escalation of violence and what that could mean for Syria’ during a press briefing in Washington DC on Thursday.
Speaking of the readout of a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which Turkey said did not reflect the contents of the conversation, Nauert underlined that the White House ‘stands by this statement, the readout and the contents of that call.’
Answering a question about a possible conflict in Syria’s Manbij between US and Turkish troops, Nauert said that Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ‘urge Turkey to de-escalate and make sure they are not coming into contact with the US and other coalition forces.’
“Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me. I think the President was clear, the President [Donald Trump] was tough with President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, Secretary [Rex] Tillerson has been as well as we are tremendously concerned about the escalation of violence and what that could mean for Syria. So we stand by, when I say ‘we’ at this point I could say on behalf the State Department and the White House, we stand by that statement. We stand by the readout and the contents of that call,” she stated.
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