Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has laid out a case for regime change in Syria but says the US military will remain engaged there.
While repeating his stance that the way forward does not include President Bashar al-Assad, Tillerson on Wednesday urged patience for his departure while calling for UN-supervised Syrian elections.
"Assad's regime is corrupt and his methods of governance and economic development have increasingly excluded certain ethnic and religious groups," he told an audience at Stanford University in California.
"Such oppression cannot persist forever."
He said the US expects the desire for a return to normal life coupled with pressure from the outside "will help rally the Syrian people and individuals within the regime to compel Assad to step aside".
The US believes supervised free elections - called for in a joint-statement signed in November by US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin - "will result in the permanent departure of Assad and his family from power".
Tillerson said the US, the EU and regional partners will not provide reconstruction assistance to any area under control of the Assad regime but once Assad is gone, the US will gladly encourage the normalisation of economic ties between Syria and other nations.
He also said the US plan for further stabilisation in Syria includes an indefinite US military presence. The US has at least 2000 troops in Syria, according to Pentagon figures released in December.
Other reasons for the continued US engagement are that ungoverned spaces in Syria are breeding grounds for Islamic State and other terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda, which Tillserson said was still "a grave threat" that was looking to "reconstitute in new and powerful ways".
Troops backing Assad have recently said they want the US presence in Syria to end.
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