The agreement requires the Kurds to liberate some territory in Syria along the Turkish border as part of an agreement that largely strengthens Turkey’s position and objectives in the week-long conflict.

Vice President Mike Pence, who reached an agreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hailed the agreement as a way to end the bloodshed caused by Turkey’s invasion.

But he was silent on whether this was a second rejection of America’s former Kurdish allies, many of whom Ankara brands as terrorists. The deal provides for a conditional end to U.S. economic sanctions and no obvious long-term consequences for Turkey for its actions.

Turkish troops and Turkish-backed Syrian fighters launched an offensive against Kurdish forces in Northern Syria a week ago, two days after trump abruptly announced he was withdrawing the U.S. military from the area.

Trump has been widely criticized for reaching out to the Kurds, who have suffered heavy losses since 2016 as U.S. partners in the fight against ISIS extremists.

While U.S. officials have insisted that trump did not authorize Turkey’s invasion and only that he was not convincing enough in the case against him to Erdogan, the cease-fire codifies almost all of Turkey’s stated goals in the conflict.

Turkish foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the United States had accepted the idea of a “safe zone” long pushed by Turkey and insisted that Turkish armed forces would control the zone. He also made it clear that Turkey would not stop in the previously restricted zone; he said Turkish control over the Syrian side of the border should extend to the Iraqi border.

Once in the center, the commander of Kurdish forces in Syria, Mazlum Abdi, told Kurdish television: “We will do everything possible for the success of the ceasefire agreement.” However, one Kurdish official, Razan Hiddo, said the Kurdish people would refuse to live under Turkish occupation.

Trump appeared to support the Turkish goal of ridding the Syrian side of the border of Kurdish fighters. “They had to have it cleaned up,” he said.

During a campaign rally in Texas on Thursday night, trump said, ” Sometimes you have to let them fight like two kids in a lot, you have to let them fight and then you pull them apart.”

During the talks, according to a senior U.S. official, Pence and national security adviser Robert O’brien expressed condolences to Erdogan and his military leaders for their deaths and injuries during the week-long campaign.

Leading U.S. lawmakers were less than pleased than trump.

Senator MITT Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, said he welcomed the ceasefire but wanted to know what America’s role in the region would be and why Turkey did not face consequences for its invasion.

“Furthermore, the cease-fire does not change the fact that America has abandoned an ally,” he said on the Senate floor.

A senior U.S. official insisted the agreement was agreed in consultation with Kurdish forces, and Pence said the U.S. would “facilitate” the Kurdish withdrawal, but he did not say whether that would include the use of U.S. troops.

The Pentagon could not immediately comment on the situation.

As pence spoke in Ankara, U.S. troops continued to Board planes leaving Northern Syria. Officials said several hundred have already flown out, with hundreds more consolidated at several bases waiting to get out.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a trump confidant who has criticized the Republican President’s departure, said he believed U.S. troops would be needed as part of efforts to implement and end the fighting.

“There’s just no way around it,” he said. “We must keep control of the sky” and work with the Kurds.

While the cease-fire appears to have temporarily slowed legislation in Congress aimed at punishing Turkey and condemning trump’s withdrawal of U.S. troops, lawmakers have given no sign of abandoning the measures altogether.

Shortly before announcing the pause in hostilities, Graham and Sen. Chris van HOLLEN, D-Md., has introduced legislation that would ban U.S. military aid to Turkey, seek to limit foreign arms sales to Ankara and impose sanctions on senior Turkish officials if Turkey withdraws its troops. These sanctions will include a report on Erdogan’s family assets.

Unlike Pence’s description of a limited safe zone, the agreement would effectively create a zone of control patrolled by the Turkish military, which Ankara wants to stretch across the entire border from the Euphrates river to the Iraqi border, although the agreement does not specify the extent of the zone. Turkish troops currently control about a quarter of that length captured in the past nine days.

The rest is held by Kurdish forces or Syrian government forces with the support of Russia, which the Kurds have invited to protect them from the Turks. None of these parties does not have particular good reasons in order to let Turkish troops in these areas.

But the agreement essentially gives the Turks what they sought to achieve with their military operation in the first place.

Once Kurdish forces are withdrawn from the safe zone, Turkey has committed to a permanent ceasefire but is not obliged to withdraw its troops. In addition, the deal gives Turkey relief from sanctions imposed by the administration and threatened to increase, meaning there will be no punishment for the operation.

Brett Mcgurk, the former civilian head of the US-led campaign against is, wrote on Twitter that the deal was a gift to the Turks.

“The US has just ratified Turkey’s plan to effectively extend its border 30km into Syria without being able to significantly influence the facts on the ground,” he wrote.

Danielle Pletka, Vice President of foreign and defense policy research at The American enterprise Institute, tweeted: “This is a respite while we surrender to Turkish rule in northeastern Syria.”

Erdogan said Wednesday that he would not be intimidated by U.S. sanctions. According to him, the fighting will pay off only if the Kurdish fighters give up their weapons and give up their positions near the Turkish border.

Before the talks began, the Kurds said they would object to any agreement in the direction that Pence had announced. But Pence claimed the US had received “repeated assurances from them that they would pull out.”

Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. troops has been widely condemned, including by Republican officials not directly connected to his administration. Republicans and Democrats in the House of representatives, bitterly divided over the investigation into trump’s impeachment, United Wednesday for an overwhelming 354-60 denunciation of the U.S. oatmeal.

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AP WRITERS Robert burns, deb Richmann, Alan FRAM, Darlene Superville, Lolita K. Baldor, Jill Colvin, Kevin Fracking and Ellen Nickmeier contributed from Washington.