Blinken says during a press conference in Jordan on Saturday that the contact was partly related to the search for Austin Tice, an American journalist who was kidnapped in 2012 at the beginning of the Syrian civil war.
The Foreign Minister did not want to go into details but says that the conversation also touched on, among other things, how the Islamist group intends to govern Syria during a transition period.
Our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them (HTS) to succeed and we are ready to help them do so, he added.
Blinken is the first American official to publicly confirm contacts between the American government and the Islamist group.
The US and other Western governments classify HTS as a terrorist group due to its roots in al-Qaeda's Syrian branch.
This entails strict sanctions, including a ban on providing any "material support" to the group or its members. However, the sanctions do not prevent American officials from communicating with designated groups.
