White House makes clear it's not trying to push Assad out

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration declared Friday that it wasn't pursuing a strategy to push Syrian President Bashar Assad out of power, making clear its focus is on defeating the Islamic State group.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the U.S. approach was being driven by a new "reality" and that Assad's future had to be a decision for the Syrian people.

Assad's grip over Syria has been at the heart of a six-year war that has killed as many as a half-million people, helped spawn a global migration crisis and led to the emergence of IS as a worldwide terror threat.

While the statements of Trump's policy, by themselves, break little from where President Barack Obama left U.S. policy upon exiting office, they differ sharply from Obama's earlier demands for Assad to leave power.

In December 2015, then-Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a very similar message in Moscow, saying "the United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change" and promising to facilitate a peace process in which "''Syrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria."

[...] the White House also has been trying to emphasize to American voters how it is pursuing a new track on U.S. foreign policy after Trump's severe criticism of the status quo.