CAIRO, July 29. /TASS/. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is ready to integrate with the new Syrian government’s army but understands that this process will take time, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi said.

"We are committed to the March 10 agreement [with Syria’s new authorities], but its implementation will take time," he said as quoted by the Al Hadath television channel.

According to Abdi, the Kurdish alliance "shares the central government’s stance on Syria’s unity with a unified army and single flag."

"The integration of 100,000 [SDF] fighters into the Syrian defense ministry is a large-scale operation," he said, adding that Syria "will not have two armies but one centralized armed force instead."

Both the SDF and Damascus agree that Syria "should be an integral state," and "decentralization doesn’t mean the country’s division," he stressed. In this context, he noted that the new government "has stated its readiness to accept our demands concerning the Kurdish language and Kurdish cultural traditions." The SDF, he explained, insists that the Kurdish language be granted official status, along with Arabic, in Kurd-populated Syrian regions.

The SDF commander also said that he is still ready to meet with the interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. Such a meeting was postponed by Damascus amid the developments in Sweida.

Al-Sharaa and Abdi signed an agreement on incorporating the Kurdish force into the Syrian government army on March 10. Under the agreement, control of all civilian and military facilities, including airports, oil and gas fields located in northeastern Syria will go over to Damascus by the end of the year.

However, talks between the interim government and the Kurds in Damascus on July 10 ended to no avail. The SDF delegation insisted on preserving its own military structure and joining the Syrian army as an independent force. Damascus, in turn, demanded that northeastern regions submit to the central authorities, both administratively and militarily.

On July 23, SDF military spokesman Farhad Shami said that amid the developments in Sweida Kurdish units will not surrender their arms to the authorities and stressed that the SDF are in talks with Damascus "as an independent rather than subordinate side."