Senior US official visited Damascus for talks: Lebanese daily

A senior US security official has recently traveled to Damascus via Lebanese soil and held talks with Syrian officials, a Lebanese daily reported on Friday.

“Damascus welcomed the first official American figure from one of [the US] security apparatuses, without publicizing it,” the Lebanese al-Akhbar daily newspaper reported.

The daily also reported that the unidentified US official, traveling by land from Lebanon, spent a few hours in Syria before returning to Beirut.

According to the report, the official “arrived in Beirut earlier this week and went to Syria by land on Tuesday, accompanied by Lebanese security officials to the Syrian capital.”

It said that Syrian officials remain reticent to meet with American officials until the US government alters its foreign policy with regard to Syria, where Washington has long pursued a regime change.

Syrian and US officials have not yet made any comments on the report.

If confirmed the visit would be the first known instance of a high-ranking American official to meet with Syrian officials in the capital in half a decade.

In January 2016, Brett H. McGurk, the US special envoy to the international coalition against the Daesh terrorist group visited Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria.

The visit was described by The New York Times as the first known by a high-ranking US official to the country since a Washington-led coalition began its air raids in Syria.

Meanwhile on Friday, Russia accused the US of committing a “war crime” in Syria, saying the American forces deployed to Syria had hindered the flow of aid to Syrian refugees.

“The most severe humanitarian situation remains in the al-Tanf region,” the Russian Defense ministry’s Syria reconciliation center said, referring to a garrison where the Americans have a military base.

The US has declared an expanse stretching 55 kilometers (3 miles) around the al-Tanf area a “de-confliction zone,” only letting in forces allied to Washington and blocking out the Syrian army.

Tanf is located in a zone, where Syria, Iraq and Jordan’s borders meet, and is, hence, of paramount strategic importance.

SS