The United States has a “general” deal in place to establish a safe zone along the Syria-Turkey border, the Donald Trump administration’s top Syria policy official said, but the effort will not include European countries.
Ambassador Jim Jeffrey, the dual-hatted presidential envoy to the anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition and State Department Syria envoy, said that both Turkey and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have agreed to pull back Kurdish forces and to establish a safe zone in northeastern Syria. But Jeffrey told Al-Monitor that European allies would not be part of the arrangement.