“Any military solution, as far as the SDF is concerned, will lead to more losses and destruction and difficulties for the Syrian people,” Kino Gabriel, spokesperson for the US-backed force, told Reuters.
He was responding to comments from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who had described the SDF as “the only problem left in Syria.”
"We're going to deal with it by two options," Assad said in an interview with Russia Today aired on Thursday.
"The first one: we started now opening doors for negotiations. Because the majority of them are Syrians, supposedly they like their country, they don't like to be puppets to any foreigners," he explained.
"We have one option, to live with each other as Syrians. If not, we're going to resort... to liberating those areas by force."
Assad highlighted objections to US support for the force.
"It's our land, it's our right and it's our duty to liberate it," he said. "The Americans should leave. Somehow they're going to leave."
There are an estimated 2,000 US forces stationed in northern Syria.
The SDF is dominated by the Kurdish YPG forces and controls at least a quarter of territory in Syria. Their forces, with the backing of the US-led coalition against ISIS, have defeated the terror group in Manbij, Tabqa, and Raqqa and are currently battling militants in eastern Deir ez-Zor province where they have occasionally clashed with forces loyal to the regime.
As Syria descended into civil war, Kurds carved out the self-autonomous region of Rojava. They have generally maintained an uneasy truce with Assad. Damascus has maintained control of pockets within the Kurdish city of Qamishli and Syrian forces were deployed to the Kurdish canton of Afrin to bolster defences against Turkish forces earlier this year.
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