US delegation seeks Syria ceasefire after Trump undercuts mission

A senior US delegation faces the mammoth task of pressuring Turkey to halt its offensive in north-east Syria or face sanctions, hours after Donald Trump said his country had no stake in defending Kurdish fighters who died by the thousands as the US’s partners against Islamic State.

The US vice-president, Mike Pence, is leading the delegation to Ankara, along with the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the White House national security adviser, Robert O’Brien. They are expected to meet the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at 2.30pm local time (12.30pm BST).

On Wednesday Trump hailed his decision to withdraw US troops in Syria, paving the way for the Turkish offensive, as “strategically brilliant”, declaring that the Kurds he had abandoned were “much safer now” and were anyway “not angels”.

His remarks not only undercut the mission to Ankara but contradicted the official assessment of both the state and defence departments that the Turkish offensive was a disaster for regional stability and the fight against Isis.

In two further extraordinary developments, a bizarre letter from Trump to Erdoğan emerged in which the US president warned his Turkish counterpart “don’t be a fool”, and a White House meeting with Democratic lawmakers descended into mutual accusations of “meltdowns”.

The letter, first published by Fox Business, was sent on 9 October – three days after a phone call in which Erdoğan informed Trump of his plans, and understood the US president had given a green light. Trump issued a statement announcing the offensive was about to happen and that US troops would be moved out of the way. He also invited Erdoğan to the White House.

Trump wrote: “History will look upon you favourably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don’t happen. Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!”

Erdoğan “received the letter, thoroughly rejected it and put it in the bin”, Turkish presidential sources told the BBC on Thursday. There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials on the BBC report.

On the day the letter was received, Erdoğan launched his offensive to create a 20-mile (32km) buffer zone between Turkey and territory held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group Ankara regards as proxies for the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) that has waged a 35-year insurgency against the Turkish state.

The Turkish president insisted on Wednesday he would “never declare a ceasefire” and his spokesman, İbrahim Kalın, said Turkey was preparing retaliatory sanctions against the US. Kalın said Ankara had told the US administration it would not stop the offensive and would not negotiate with Kurdish forces.

Trump had no words of criticism for Erdoğan or the Turkish military on Wednesday, despite the fact the administration imposed sanctions on Monday in an effort to force an end to the offensive. Those sanctions have been criticised as toothless by members of Congress, who are preparing their own sanctions package.

Two-thirds of House Republicans supported a resolution condemning Trump’s decision to withdraw troops.

The vote triggered what the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, described as “a meltdown” by the president when she and other members of Congress visited him in the White House.

Pelosi and other top Democrats said they walked out of a contentious White House meeting after it devolved into a series of insults and it became clear the president had no plan to deal with a potential revival of Isis in the Middle East.

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, told reporters Trump had called Pelosi a “third-rate politician”. He said the meeting “was not a dialogue, this was sort of a diatribe, a nasty diatribe not focused on the facts”.

Pelosi said: “I pray for the president all the time … I think now we have to pray for his health – this was a very serious meltdown on the part of the president.” She added Democrats “couldn’t continue in the meeting because he was just not relating to the reality of it”.

Republicans argued it was Pelosi who would have been the problem.The White House spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, called Pelosi’s action “baffling but not surprising”.

Trump pushed back in a series of tweets, describing Pelosi’s intervention during the meeting as an “unhinged meltdown”.