US Warns Turkey Against Unilateral Intervention in East Euphrates

  • 4/6/2019
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Washington confirmed its adherence to the statement issued following a meeting between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Wednesday. "I read the readout of our meeting. Spot on. Every word of it," Pompeo told reporters at the State Department Friday. Following their meeting on the sidelines of the Meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in a statement provided by the State Department on behalf of the secretary, Pompeo said he warned Cavusoglu about "the potentially devastating consequences of unilateral Turkish military action" in the northeast of Syria. The State Department readout, attributed to spokesperson Robert Palladino, said Pompeo had expressed support for negotiations on the northeast of Syria. Turkey expressed irritation with the State Department Wednesday over its description of the meeting between Pompeo and Cavusoglu. Spokesperson Hami Aksoy accused the State Department of having written its readout before the meeting had even taken place and said that it included things that were never brought up. "The readout published today by the Department of State and obviously prepared before the meeting between Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not only fails to reflect the content of the meeting but also contains matters that were not even raised during the said meeting," Aksoy said in a statement. “Similar issues were encountered during past meetings. Our alliance requires that such statements are prepared with greater care while avoiding to include matters that were not raised during meetings,” he added. Anadolu Agency reported from Turkish diplomats that the two ministers discussed bilateral ties and latest developments. In the same context, Turkish FM said that the statement released did not reflect the actual language used in the meeting, expressing his shock. "With regards to this readout, I was there and we know what we talked, and such language was never used, in Syria particularly they never mentioned such things about the unilateral actions of Turkey," Cavusoglu told reporters at a news conference in Washington. Pompeo discussed with his Turkish counterpart concerns of Turkey possessing S-400 missile defense system, knowing that Ankara seeks to acquire F-35 jets but Americans fear this would disclose their highly-advanced technology. The US has recently halted delivery of equipment related to the F-35s to Turkey.

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