News / Syria / Foreign Policy

US occupying Syria oil wells, looting resources: Damascus envoy to UN

Saturday, 23 November 2019 10:58 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 23 November 2019 4:20 PM ]

Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar al-Ja'afari addresses the United Nations Security Council in New York on January 22, 2019. (Photo by AP)

Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar al-Ja'afari says the United States has been occupying the country's oil fields and looting its resources as the UN remains silent on Washington's act of theft.

"The US occupies Syrian oil wells and plunders the Syrians' revenues in the shadow of the UN Security Council's silence," he told a meeting of the 15-member body in New York on Saturday.

Ja'afari said the US state terrorism has targeted Syria in a bid to change the region's geopolitical map. "The Syrian war will end when foreign support for terrorism ends," he added.

The ambassador further accused Turkey of occupying the Syrian territory, killing citizens, displacing tens of thousands of people and deploying terrorists to the Arab country.

Last month, US President Donald Trump announced that American troops would remain in Syria to “secure” oil reserves and even put up “a hell of a fight” against any force that tried to take them.

He also expressed interest in making a deal with ExxonMobil or another energy company to tap Syrian oil reserves.

Pentagon chief Mark Esper then threatened that US forces deployed around Syrian oil fields would use “military force” against any party that may seek to challenge control of those sites, even if it were Syrian government forces or their Russian allies.

US threatens ‘military force’ against ‘any group’ challenging occupation of Syria oil fields

The Pentagon threatens to use ‘military force’ against any group -- including Syrian and Russian forces -- seeking to challenge the US military’s occupation of oil fields in Syria.

US troops move from Iraq to Syria

On Saturday, official SANA news agency reported that a convoy of US forces had entered Syria's Hasakah Province from Iraq.

The convoy consisting of eleven vehicles, including a tanker and a truck carrying military equipment, had passed the al-Waleed border crossing on the Iraqi-Syrian border.

German AfD lawmakers visit Syria

In another development on Friday, members of Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has long pushed for the deportation Syrian migrants, visited the war-torn country.

They held a meeting with representatives of the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus to show that Syria is a "safe country of origin" for migrants to return.

The meeting also touched on a potential economic partnership between Germany and Syria.

The AfD said in a statement that their goal was to "assess concretely the situation in Syria in person as well as to have a dialogue over the situation surrounding the Syrian people and the current state of the peace process."

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