The United States is in talks to withdraw troops from Niger more than a month after the country’s ruling junta ordered American forces to leave, the Pentagon said on Monday,
Al-Monitor reports.
The Biden administration’s No. 2 top diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, told the junta’s appointed prime minister, Ali Lamine Zeine, on Friday that the two countries would plan for the withdrawal of more than 1,100 US troops in the country.
Pentagon press secretary US Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder on Monday confirmed that talks had begun with Niamey over “the orderly withdrawal of US forces from the country.”
Defense Department and officers from US Africa Command based in Stuttgart, Germany, were participating in the discussions, military officials said.
