Obama to modify train and equip program for Syrian opponents

U.S. military program to train and equip Syrian opposition groups will be refocused, a senior defense department official said on Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reporters traveling with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, said that the training and vetting of Syrian rebel forces would continue and refocused. But he avoided going into details.

Pentagon officials were originally due to announce the end of the beleaguered program on Friday while Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was leaving from London after his talks with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, about the continuing wars in Syria and Iraq.

An earlier report in The New York Times said the Obama administration would end the program as it has failed to enable ground forces capable of repelling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria.

Speaking at a press conference in London, Carter said the U.S. will announce changes to the Syrian training program within hours.

He called it a "more strategic approach" than what the U.S. has been doing from the beginning. "We have been looking for now several weeks at ways to improve that program," Carter said. "I wasn't satisfied with the early efforts in that regard."

The $500 million training program has been beset by a series of embarrassing setbacks. The first group of trainees largely disbanded soon after they were sent into combat; some were captured or killed, while others fled. A second class yielded only a small number of new fighters, drawing criticism from U.S. lawmakers who condemned the program as a joke and a failure.

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. Lloyd Austin, acknowledged that the program got off "to a slow start" and he told Congress that they are looking into options that would best employ the moderate forces.

Officials have also said the new plan scales back the number of rebels the U.S. expects to train from the initial 5,400 per year to a much smaller total. It would also streamline the vetting process designed to weed out terrorist infiltrators.