CIA halting support for Syria rebels: report

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is shutting down its programme to support rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Citing unnamed US officials, the Post said the four-year-old covert operation has had limited impact, especially since Russian forces stepped in to support Assad in 2015.

President Donald Trump made the decision to drop the programme nearly a month ago - according to the Post - after meeting with CIA chief Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor HR McMaster.

White House and CIA officials declined to comment on the report.

The Post said phasing out the CIA program reflects Trump's "interest in finding ways to work with Russia" as well as "an acknowledgment of Washington's limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power".

The decision came as the US and Russia negotiated a ceasefire in southwest Syria, covering some of the area from which the rebels operated.

The ceasefire was announced on 7 July at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany where Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their first face-to-face meeting.

President Barack Obama approved the rebel aid programme in 2013 as various insurgent groups sought external support in a general uprising against the Assad regime.

Thousands of Syrian anti-regime fighters were trained and armed in the programme.

However, rebel fighters often signed agreements to use the weapons to fight the Islamic State group and not the regime.

But the US commitment remained ambiguous amid doubts in some quarters that the rebels could actually manage to depose Assad and as attention turned to the rising power of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Support for the programme further eroded last year after the rebels lost the areas they held in the Syrian city of Aleppo under a brutal Russian-backed government assault, while Iran-backed militias surrounded the opposition base al-Tanf.