Paris: President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday there would be no “immediate” reduction in the 5,100 French troops supporting Sahel nations fighting an militant insurgency.
“Changes that are likely to be significant will be made to our military deployment in the Sahel when the time comes, but they will not be made immediately’’, Macron told reporters after a video-linked summit with leaders of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
“They will result first of all from a collective discussion with our Sahel partners and with the partners who have accepted to help us, and they will be based on the results obtained and the degree of engagement from our partners’’, he said.
Calls have risen in France for a review of the Barkhane force deployed in western Africa, which aims to curtail the terrorism threat while training local security forces, following a series of deadly attacks on French troops.
“A French withdrawal, a massive withdrawal of men, which is a possibility I have considered, would be a mistake’’, Macron said.
“It would be paradoxical to weaken our deployment at a time when we have a political and military alignment that enables us to reach our goals’’, he said. “In the coming months we will not change our presence. We hope that we will have concrete results in terms of security in the very next months, for me this means between now and the summer’’, Macron added.
“Beyond summer, I want to work with our partners for an evolution of our presence to consolidate our military victory in the region’’, he added.
— AFP
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