Blinken says US has had 'direct contact' with Syria's HTS rebels who toppled al-Assad

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he has been in "direct contact" with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group and laid out the principles for ongoing support for Syria's political transition.

Speaking at a press conference in the Jordanian city Aqaba, Blinken said that America and its allies "have an important stake in helping the Syrian people chart this new path."

"ISIS and other terrorist groups still maintain presence in Syria, and want to use this period of uncertainty to try to regain a foothold.  No one understands these challenges better than Syrian people themselves.  And Syrians know they are going to need support from their neighbours and from the international community to meet these challenges," he said.

Those comments come less than a week after insurgents, led by HTS, marched into Damascus and toppled Bashar al-Assad, who had ruled Syria with an iron fist for 24 years.

Since then, HTS has worked to establish security and start a political transition. But the group has also tried to reassure a public concerned about extremist jihadis among the rebels.

Insurgent leaders say the group has broken with its extremist past, though HTS is still proscribed a terrorist group by the United States and European countries. The group previously had ties to Al-Qaeda.

"In this region and elsewhere, we’ve seen how the fall of a repressive regime can swiftly give way to more conflict and chaos, how the shoes of one dictator can be filled by another, or how interference by an outside country can be thrown off only to be replaced by another," Blinken said. 

"That’s why it's so important that we and our partners came together today to agree on principles that will guide our efforts to help the Syrian people meet these