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US President Donald Trump is ordering the Pentagon and State Department to develop a series of “safe zones” for refugees fleeing violence in Syria, according to reports.
Reuters reported on Wednesday:
U.S. President Donald Trump said he “will absolutely do safe zones in Syria” to protect people fleeing violence there.
“I’ll absolutely do safe zones in Syria for the people,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News broadcast on Wednesday.
“I think that Europe has made a tremendous mistake by allowing these millions of people to go into Germany and various other countries,” he said.
The agency also said that, according to a draft document, Trump is going to order the Pentagon and the State Department in coming days to craft a plan for setting up the “safe zones.”
“The Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Secretary of Defense, is directed within 90 days of the date of this order to produce a plan to provide safe areas in Syria and in the surrounding region in which Syrian nationals displaced from their homeland can await firm settlement, such as repatriation or potential third-country resettlement,” the draft order reportedly said.
There are no details on what would constitute a safe zone, where they might be created and who would defend them.
The reports still have to be confirmed, officially. Furthermore, the reports about the draft document originally appeared in Reuters, an agency which worked very close with other mainstream propaganda outlets oposing Trump during the US Presidential Election 2016.
On Thursday, spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Huseyin Muftuoglu, said Turkey is waiting to see the outcome of Trump’s idea.
“Setting up of safe zones is something Turkey has advocated from the start. The best example is in Jarablus,” he said, referring to a town near the Turkish border that was seized from ISIS by the Turkish Armed Forces and pro-Turkish militants..
The Kremlin said Thursday that the US has to calculate all the possible risks of creating these zones in Syria (TASS):
The Kremlin calls on the United States to calculate all the possible risks of creating ‘safe’ zones for Syrian refugees not to deteriorate the situation, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“It is important that this does not worsen the situation with the refugees,” Peskov told reporters. “All the possible consequences should be considered,” he stressed.
Peskov also said the US partners had not consulted with Russia before announcing the decision.
