French President Emmanuel Macron has claimed that it he who convinced Donald Trump not to pull US troops out of Syria and instead commit “for the long term”.
According to Macron it was also his influence that apparently led to the choice of targets in the recent strike against Syria.
Following Macrons comments on Sunday, the White House said: “The US mission has not changed – the president has been clear that he wants US forces to come home as quickly as possible”.
Macron, however is now saying that he “never said” the U.S. and France should maintain a military presence in Syria, adding that he believes the U.S. had realized that its responsibility in Syria is to address humanitarian crises and the fight against ISIS.
RT reports: In a lengthy interview with French media on Sunday, Macron said he was the reason that US President Donald Trump reportedly decided that he no longer wants to pull out the troops out of Syria and outsource the issue to the US’ allies.
“Ten days ago, President Trump was saying the United States of America had a duty to disengage from Syria. I assure you, we have convinced him that it is necessary to stay for the long-term,” Macron told to BFMTV during a two-hour long interview.
Macron’s influence, apparently, extended not only to US troop deployment, but also the choice of targets in the recent strike against Syria.
“The second thing is that we have also convinced him that he must limit his strikes to chemical weapons, at a time when there was a media furore via tweet,” he said, referring to Trump taunting Moscow with a tweet about his “nice, new and ‘smart'” missiles.
France joined the US and the UK in carrying out a massive missile strike on Syria on Saturday, which the trio claims crippled Damascus’ chemical weapons infrastructure. Over 100 cruise and air-to-surface missiles were launched during the attack, which was denounced by Damascus as “barbaric” aggression.
On April 3, Trump said that he wanted to pull US forces out of S..
