Pompeo: "Some progress has certainly been made" ahead of the 120-hour deadline

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that “some progress has certainly been made” ahead of the 120-hour deadline of the ceasefire agreement negotiated between US and Turkey.

Pompeo, speaking at the Heritage Foundation President’s Club Meeting, did not go into details, suggesting he would elaborate later in his remarks.

“The truth was that it was not in Turkey’s interest as a NATO ally to continue with that incursion. The truth was that our invasion set back our shared fight against ISIS. We think now we’re in a better place,” Pompeo said.

“The President used America’s economic might, our economic power, to avoid a kinetic conflict with a NATO ally,” he continued. 

Pompeo claimed that the Trump administration’s work to build out the D-ISIS coalition “never gets talked about.”

“The work that we did to build out that team, united around the destruction of the caliphate in Syria and Iraq, was important and effective,” he said.

Pompeo acknowledged that the Kurdish forces “were great warriors” — but reiterated that the US is “mindful” that Turkey has “legitimate security concerns” with the PKK.