MOSCOW. March 20 (Interfax) - The U.S. military has been offered to participate in the humanitarian operation to take refugees from the camp Rukban, which is located on the territory of Syria controlled by the United States.
"We offer the U.S. side to participate in covering the humanitarian operation to evacuate suffering Syrian citizens from air by the joint efforts of the Russian Aerospace Forces and the U.S. Armed Forces Command in the al-Tanf area," the heads of the coordination headquarters of Russia and Syria on the return of refugees said in a statement.
"We urge the U.S. administration, for its part, to support this initiative and appoint its representatives to escort the motorcades, and also to influence militants form the controlled groups to ensure unimpeded access to the camp Rukban," Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of the Russian national defense management center, and Hussein Makhlouf, Syrian minister of municipal governance and environment, the heads of the headquarters, said.
Mizintsev and Makhlouf said there is currently no flow of refugees from Rukban, although UN polls showed that they are ready to leave.
"Having assessed the situation in detail, we have come to the understanding that the U.S. military base in al-Tanf clearly does not have enough capabilities to ensure the safety of the residents of Rukban who have expressed their wish to return to their native land," the statement said.
"Having become a pawn of its own destructive policies pursued on the Syrian track, the U.S. side is now incapable of exerting influence on all illegal military groups in the occupied zone," Mizintsev and Makhlouf said.
"The Syrian government is ready to provide reliable protection and defense to six humanitarian motorcades using the security services of the Syrian Arab Republic in interaction with the units of the military police of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation," they said.
There are some 50,000 refugees in the Rukban camp. The camp is located in the de-escalation zone al-Tanf, which was unilaterally created by the U.S. on the Syrian-Jordanian border, near the U.S. al-Tanf base.
Moscow and Damascus earlier said refugees in Rukban were in a critical situation and had an acute shortage of food, warm clothes and medications.
Russia is accusing the U.S. of obstructing access of international humanitarian assistance to Rukban and preventing refugees from leaving the camp. Russia has repeatedly called on the U.S. to withdraw its troops from the area around al-Tanf and put the Syrian government in charge of this territory.