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Thursday 21 Jan 2016 - 19:18 Makkah mean time-11-4-1437
Turkish-Syrian border (DHA Photo)
Washington (IINA) – The United States is accelerating efforts to help Turkey clamp down on illegal activities on its border with Syria and will offer technologies to Ankara to help it secure the frontier, senior U.S. officials said.
Washington and Ankara have been discussing for months how to seal the last piece of unsecured border, a 98-kilometer-long (60 mile-long) stretch that has served as a thruway for Islamic State (IS) fighters, black-market goods and war materiel.
IS terrorist group controls the Syrian side of the border, and the effort to secure it assumed new urgency after November's deadly Paris attacks. Some of the Paris attackers used or attempted to use the Syria-Turkey border to travel between IS-held territory and Europe, the officials said.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is due to arrive in Turkey on Thursday and will meet with President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to discuss the fight against Islamic State.
In the same context, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in February will lead an inter-agency delegation and offer the Turkish government a menu of specific border-control technologies, the U.S. officials told Reuters.
AB/IINA
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