French President Emmanuel Macron held a press conference with the Chadian President Idriss Déby in the capital N’Djamena on Sunday, where he spoke about Syria and military operations in the Sahel, reports FRANCE 24.
Macron also spoke about US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull American troops out of Syria.
The French president said, “An ally should be dependable… I very deeply regret the decision made on Syria".
Trump made a surprise announcement on December 19th that he would withdraw the roughly 2,000 US troops from Syria, declaring that the Islamic State group had been defeated. Security experts say that it is not the case - and it is also at odds with the assessment of Trump's own administration. The move was met with criticism from allies around the world.
Brett McGurk, the US special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat Isis (another acronym for the jihadist group), resigned on Friday after the president’s decision.
In an email announcing his decision to his colleagues obtained by The New York Times, McGurk called Trump's move "a shock" and "a complete reversal of policy that was articulated to us".
"It left our coalition partners confused and our fighting partners bewildered," he said, according to the paper.