The leader of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), whose military wing is planning an operation to capture Raqqa from the Islamic State with the support of the U.S., has been denied a visa to the United States, following a similar decision in 2015.
Moslem told an audience in Washington via Skype that his application for a U.S. visa was refused two months ago.
"I'm waiting for a direct invitation from a strong man," he joked, during a panel hosted by the Kurdish Policy Research Institute on Thursday.
Speaking via teleconference at May 25’s conference, Moslem said the decision to give weapons to the YPG was a “very important step,” noting his expectation that the relationship with the U.S. would “widen into the political field, as well as the diplomatic field.”
Moslem said the type of relationship they will have with the U.S. is going to be determined by Washington, although he said that the relations were getting deeper with time and there were direct contacts in Syria with U.S. officials. Brett McGurk, U.S. Special Envoy for the Global Coalition Against Islamic State, and top Pentagon officials visited northern Syria many times and had meetings with the PYD-led Syrian Democratic Council and others.
Muslim was also sympathetic to the criticisms of the absence of political pluralism in PYD-held territories, and he said that the PYD was inexperienced in governance and there was a war going on against Islamic State.
