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US, Turkey to rethink Syria policies

For starters, the United States and Turkey need to change their approaches to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party.
Free Syrian Army fighters walk with their weapons in the Umayyad mosque of Old Aleppo, December 15, 2013. REUTERS/Molhem Barakat (SYRIA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT RELIGION) - RTX16JWX

Only about a month has passed since I was rebuked by a very high-level State Department official when I asked why the United States withheld a visa from the Syrian Kurdish leader Salih Muslim, who was to participate at a panel in Washington titled “The Kurdish Role in the New Middle East.”

The American official cited two preconditions for the Syrian Kurdish leader who wanted to come to Washington not only to participate at the panel but also to meet with the US officials. These preconditions — which I had written about earlier in Al-Monitor — were:

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