Kurdish group’s leader says US seeking deal with Turkey over NE Syria

A senior Syrian Kurdish official says the US is seeking to broker an agreement between her group and Turkey over how to manage northeastern Syria once American troops withdraw. Ilham Ahmed was in Washington on Tuesday to lobby for a negotiated US troop withdrawal that would secure her forces’ continued presence. Ankara has threatened a military offensive to drive the Kurdish forces from the area. Turkey considers the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which forms the core of a US-backed force fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) militants, to be a terrorist group. Ahmed, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, told AP the US has focused on “calming” Turkey to find a compromise that would allow her forces to remain.