Saudi Arabia is in talks with the United States to send troops into Syria to maintain a wider international coalition, the Kingdom’s foreign minister has said.

In his recent comments made on Tuesday, Adel al-Jubeir said that the offer of deployment was not at all a new one with the fact that the Riyadh had already proposed the idea to former US President Barack Obama.

“We are in discussion with the US, and have been since the beginning of the Syrian crisis about sending forces into Syria,” al-Jubeir told reporters in Riyadh during a press conference alongside Antonio Guterres, the UN chief.

“We proposed to the [previous] Obama administration that if the US were to send forces … then Saudi Arabia would consider along with other countries sending forces as part of this contingent.”

The Saudi Kingdom expressed its readiness to deploy ground troops in 2016 to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in Syria.

Saudi’s air force took part in the aerial campaign aimed at defeating ISIL right from the ver beginning in 2014; the Gulf kingdom was not able to deploy a full ground troop deployment.

The news was out after the Wall Street Journal published that US President Donald Trump was trying to assemble an Arab force that would include the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as United Arab Emirates to replace US military presence in Syria.

The force will include Egypt, according to Trump’s new National Security Adviser John Bolton, would be assigned to stabilizing the northeastern part of Syria, according to the report.

According to the news agency Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, DC, noted that the US defence establishment “is going to be very wary” of the Saudi plan.

“There’s great concern among leadership inside the [US] military about the ability of Saudi forces – just look at the war in Yemen that the US has been helping them fight with intelligence and refuelling,” said Culhane.

“There have been humanitarian catastrophes, numbers of schools and hospitals that have been hit, raising big concerns among human rights activists.”

Another key question that needs to be answered is whether what will happen to US troops in Syria and whether they are expected to stay as part of an expanded mission added Culhane.

“[It is] not at all clear that Trump is going to be OK with that,” she added.

As of now, the US has, as per the estimate 2,000 troops stationed inside Syria, according to the Pentagon.

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