Trump spoke at a news conference alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, whom he welcomed to the White House on an official trip.<\/p>\n
The president praised the established security alliance and highlighted challenges in the face of migration and terrorism.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must also work together to resolve the disaster currently taking place in Syria,\u201d he said, commending NATO for its condemnation of a chemical attack in Syria last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vicious slaughter of innocent civilians with chemical weapons, including the barbaric killing of small and helpless children and babies, must be forcefully rejected by any nation that values human life,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is time to end this brutal civil war, defeat terrorists, and allow refugees to return home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. responded with force to the chemical weapons attack that killed scores of victims in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun.<\/p>\n
Tomahawk missiles fired from U.S. destroyers in the Mediterranean struck an airbase American officials believe was used to launch the attack. The U.S. holds the Bashar al-Assad’s regime responsible.<\/p>\n
The six-year conflict has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of victims and the displacement of millions of others.<\/p>\nError, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 9)<\/span>\n More than 5 million Syrians are living in neighboring countries as refugees, according to the UN, with Turkey alone hosting nearly 3 million.<\/p>\n Trump said it was possible Russia knew the Khan Shaykhun attack in advance as he responded to questions following the news conference.<\/p>\n \u201cI would like to think that they didn\u2019t know, but certainly they could have. They were there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Trump described the relationship between the U.S. and Russia as \u201cmaybe at an all-time low\u201d.<\/p>\n The U.S. strike raised tensions between Washington and Moscow \u2014 relations that were already strained due to Russia\u2019s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.<\/p>\n As Trump spoke, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on an official visit to Moscow where he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed the two countries\u2019 joint fight against terrorism.<\/p>\n During the press conference with Stoltenberg, Trump reiterated that NATO members must \u201cmeet their financial obligations and pay what they owe\u201d by contributing 2 percent of their GDP.<\/p>\n He vowed to work to \u201cenhance this partnership\u201d and said he looked forward to visiting Brussels — home to NATO headquarters and seat of key European institutions — this spring.<\/p>\n Trump also backtracked on his past criticism of NATO\u2019s effectiveness in fighting terrorism.<\/p>\n \u201cI said it was obsolete. It is no longer obsolete,\u201d he said.<\/p>\nError, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 10)<\/span>\n Anadolu Agency<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Donald Trump said Wednesday it was \u201ctime to end this brutal civil war\u201d in Syria and return refugees to their homeland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,101,163],"tags":[77263,599,9002,8441],"class_list":["post-58722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-politics","category-recommendations","tag-donald-trump","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}