Kurds welcome German plan for international force in Syria

QAMISHLI: The top commander of  Syria ‘s Kurdish force on Thursday welcomed a German proposal for an international force to establish a security zone in the north of the country.
“We demand and agree to this,” Mazloum Abdi, head of the Syrian Democratic Forces — the moribund autonomous Kurdish region’s de facto army — told reporters.
German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has said she would raise the plan with her counterparts at an ongoing NATO meeting in Brussels.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the German proposal would need UN approval to be implemented and therefore “needs to be discussed more in detail before any decision can be made”.
The withdrawal of US troops from northern  Syria  earlier this month was followed by a string of rapid changes on the ground, with a Turkish invasion and Russian and Syrian government forces also rushing to fill the vacuum.
Moscow and Ankara signed a deal requiring all Kurdish forces to pull back from the border to behind a line 30 kilometres inside  Syria , meaning they lost control over a huge slice of the Kurdish heartland.