Trump: We’re not going into Syria, but won’t accept gas war

DEBKAfile was founded by a team of journalists in June 2000 as an independent Internet Web site, providing an intelligence and security news service. April 12, 2017, 8:09 AM (IDT)

In an apparent effort to cool rising frictions with Moscow, President Donald Trump said in a Fox Business interview to air Wednesday: ”We’re not going into Syria.”

After the United States launched a cruise missile strike against an Assad government airbase over a chemical attack against civilians in Idlib, he said: ”What I did should have been done by the Obama administration a long time before I did it.”  Asked if the United States is going to get involved in Syria, Trump said: “No. But if I see them using gas and using things that — I mean even some of the worst tyrants in the world didn’t use the kind of gases that they used. And some of the gases are unbelievably potent.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Moscow for talks with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov latger Wednesday for an attempt to defuse the high state of tension between Moscow and Washington and seek a diplomatic path out of the Syrian crisis.

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