Washington said on Tuesday that the US does not support countries upgrading their relations or expressing support to rehabilitate Bashar al-Assad, referring to the trilateral negotiations between Turkey, Syria and Russia.

Ned Price, the Spokesperson for the US State Department, answered the question about the rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus during a press briefing.

“Our policy, which is all I can speak to, is – has not changed. We do not support countries upgrading their relations or expressing support to rehabilitate the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad,” said Price.

He urged states to carefully consider the Assad regime’s human rights record over the past 12 years, remarking that it continues to inflict atrocities on the Syrian people and to deny access to lifesaving humanitarian aid.

Price stated that the US has made clear to all its allies and partners that now is not the time to normalise and upgrade relations.

“And countries should be mindful of the atrocious human rights record that the Assad regime has inflicted upon its people over the past 12 years,” the spokesperson reiterated.

The Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu will go to Washington on 17 January to meet his US counterparts, following the first negotiations between the defence ministers of Syria and Ankara.

Çavuşoğlu said in a press conference that the US had not directly displayed a negative response to the meeting between Turkey and Syria, “but,” he added, “we understand that they are against such a normalisation”.