MOSCOW, July 26./TASS/. The US military cannot stay in northeastern Syria for long, one of the leaders of the so-called Moscow group of the Syrian opposition, Qadri Jamil, told a news conference looking into the settlement of a decade-long conflict in Syria on Monday.

"The chances that Americans will stay in the northeast of Syria for long are few. They cannot stay there for a long time," Qadri Jamil said.

"If Americans stay [in Syria] as prompters, telling the two participants in the political process how they should act, nothing good will come of it," the politician added. He noted that the Americans were not in a hurry to withdraw troops from Iraq. "In Iraq, Americans are withdrawing only from the north, not from everywhere," he stressed.

The big part of the Syrian provinces Al-Hasakah, Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, located in the east and the north-east of the country, is currently controlled by US-backed Kurdish ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’. Since 2015, the US command have established nine military bases in that region. Four of them are located near the oil fields in Deir ez-Zor and the other five are located in the neighboring Al-Hasakah province, seen as the breadbasket of Syria.

In late 2019, US 45th President Donald Trump approved a plan to keep several hundred US troops in Syria, who will be tasked with controlling the oil fields in the northeast and east of the country. Damascus, however, condemns the presence of the US military in Syria as an illegal occupation accompanied by the looting of natural resources belonging to the Syrian people.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin told an online session of the UN Security Council in March that the most serious humanitarian situation in Syria was seen in the areas not under the control of Damascus, the responsibility for which is practically with the occupying countries. The US is in Syria without an invitation from the legitimate Syrian government.