US President Donald Trump has reportedly labeled his former National Security Adviser John Bolton “a traitor,” vowing his book should not be published prior to the country’s presidential election in November.

Trump has directly weighed in on the White House review of Bolton’s forthcoming book – titled ‘The Room Where It Happened’ — telling his staff that he views his former aide as “a traitor” and that everything he told him about national security is classified, noting that he will seek blocking the book’s publication, The Washington Post reported Saturday citing “two people familiar with the conversations.”

The development came after the White House-based National Security Council (NSC) warned Bolton last month that his draft “appears to contain significant amounts of classified information,” some of it top secret. However, it vowed to help him revise the manuscript and “move forward as expeditiously as possible,” according to the report.

“We will do our best to work with you to ensure your client’s ability to tell his story in a manner that protects US national security,” senior director of NSC’s records office, Ellen Knight, stated  in a Jan. 23 letter to Bolton’s attorney.

Trump, however, has insisted to his staff that Bolton’s account of his work in the White House “should not see the light of day before the November election,” the daily reported, citing the two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House discussions.

They further underlined that Trump repeatedly brought up the book with his legal team, asking whether Bolton is going to be able to publish it and telling his lawyers that Bolton should not be allowed to publish any of his interactions with him about national security because they are privileged and classified.

Bolton’s book has vowed to reveal key first-person moments between the former top aide and Trump that were central to the US president’s handling of Ukraine, an account that led to his impeachment last December by the House.

Trump also told national television anchors on February 4 during an off-the-record lunch that contents of the book were “highly classified,” according to the daily, citing notes from one participant in the luncheon.

“We’re going to try and block the publication of the book,” Trump said, according to the notes. “After I leave office, he can do this. But not in the White House.”

As the Republican-controlled US Senate launched a trial in late January on the House’s impeachment charges that Trump had abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress, the New York Times daily reported it had learned a key detail alleged by Bolton in his manuscript: that Trump told him he was conditioning the release of military aid to Ukraine on whether its government would help investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son.

Trump’s response to the report came in a Twitter post on January 27, claiming he “NEVER told John Bolton that aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into the Bidens or Democrats.”

While Democratic lawmakers demanded that Bolton be summoned to testify in the Senate trial, the majority Republican senators rejected those calls in their save Trump from potential impeachment.

Meanwhile, the daily further cites a person close to Bolton as saying that the hawkish former adviser has become increasingly concerned in recent weeks that the White House has appeared to claim that broad categories of topics are classified, without clearly identifying or articulating the reasons for that level of protection.

It also cited a separate person close to Bolton as adding that his legal team anticipates the possibility of a long legal battle over the issue.

Source: Presstv

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial will start on March 17, two weeks after Israel holds its third national election in less than a year, the Justice Ministry said on Tuesday.

Netanyahu, the first sitting Israeli prime minister to be charged with a crime, has denied any wrongdoing in the three corruption cases against him.

In addition to his legal battle, Netanyahu, who heads the right-wing Likud party, is fighting for his political life in a March 2 election, after inconclusive ballots in April and September.

In a statement, the ministry said Netanyahu, in power for the past decade and Israel’s longest-serving leader, will be required to attend the Jerusalem District Court for the first session to hear an indictment against him. A three-judge panel will hear the case.

Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing in three corruption cases. Charges, which were formally filed with the court three weeks ago, include bribery, breach of trust and fraud.

Netanyahu, 70, is accused of wrongfully accepting $264,000 worth of gifts, which prosecutors said included cigars and champagne, from tycoons, and of dispensing regulatory favours in alleged bids for improved coverage by a popular news website. He could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of bribery and a maximum three-year term for fraud and breach of trust.

(REUTERS)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday accused Iran of honing its ballistic missile skills through a satellite launch and vowed to exert more pressure.

Iran, which is enemy number one for President Donald Trump’s administration, said Sunday that it had successfully launched a satellite but that it failed to reach orbit.

Pompeo said the technology involved in a space launch was “virtually identical” to the knowhow for a long-range ballistic missile.

“Each launch, whether failed or not, further allows Iran to gain experience using such technologies that could benefit its missile programs under the guise of a peaceful space program,” Pompeo said in a statement.

“The United States will continue to build support around the world to confront the Iranian regime’s reckless ballistic missile activity, and we will continue to impose enormous pressure on the regime to change its behavior,” he said.

Trump in 2018 slapped sweeping sanctions on Iran in a bid to decrease its military clout as it withdrew the United States from a nuclear accord negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama.

Tensions soared last month after Trump ordered a drone strike that killed a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, as he visited Iraq, where Iranian-allied Shiite militias had fired rockets on bases housing US troops.

Source:  AFP

The death toll from a shooting spree by a soldier in northeastern Thailand has reached 26 people, as officials rule out ideological motives in the attack.

Thai security forces shot and killed the rogue soldier behind the mass shooting in northeastern Nakhon Ratchasima City, about 250 kilometers from the capital, Bangkok, on Sunday morning, after an overnight standoff at the Terminal 21 shopping center of the city.

The suspected attacker was identified as junior army officer Sergeant-Major Jakrapanth Thomma, 32, a sharp shooter and gun enthusiast who had been stationed at a military base near the city.

“It was a personal conflict… over a house deal,” Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters in Nakhon Ratchasima on Sunday. He had traveled to there to meet with hospitalized survivors.

Prayuth said the dispute was between the soldier and a relative of the soldier’s commanding officer.

The higher-ranking military official was one of the people reported killed at the base before the soldier moved on from there to the shopping mall and began shooting randomly at civilians.

The suspect was armed with an assault weapon and ammunition stolen from the army base, officials said.

One day before the attack, Jakrapanth had posted on his Facebook an angry rebuke of rich people. “Rich from cheating. Taking advantage of other people. Do they think they can spend the money in hell?” Facebook later removed the suspect’s account, saying there was “no place on Facebook for people who commit this kind of atrocity.”

Source: Presstv

Some world leaders serve a set term and others go on to rule for decades.

Here is a list of current world leaders who have held onto power the longest. The list excludes monarchs.

Equatorial Guinea

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 77, has been president of the central African nation for some 40 years after toppling his uncle in a 1979 coup. He tops the list of the world’s current longest-ruling leader.

His government has been besieged by allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

The President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema meets with Prime Minister of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn (not seen) at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on February 21, 2018. (Photo by Minasse Wondimu Hailu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

His son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, is also the country’s vice president. In 2016, his collection of 25 exotic cars were seized during a corruption investigation and sold at a charity in Switzerland for over $27 million.

Cameroon

Paul Biya, 86, took office in 1982 after a seven-year stint as prime minister. His presidency has faced threats from opposition parties and increased violence in the north and west portions of the country, where separatists have fought for a separate independent state.

President of Cameroon Paul Biya with Chinese President Xi Jinping (not pictured) attend a signing ceremony at The Great Hall Of The People on March 22, 2018 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Cameroon also faces threats from Boko Haram militants across the border in Nigeria.

Cambodia

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen began his fifth term in 2018, cementing his status among the world’s longest rulers. The 67-year-old has been in power for 34 years, strong-arming his way through his country’s political system.

He fled to Vietnam during the regime of Pol Pot, when an estimated two million Cambodians were killed. He returned in 1979, eventually becoming prime minister in 1985 in a Vietnamese-backed single-party communist government and led Cambodia through a civil war against the radical communist Khmer Rouge.

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen adjusts his glasses during the 25th International Conference on The Future of Asia on May 30, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

He cracked down on critics and opponents after the 2013 general election showed declining support for his ruling party.

Uganda

Longtime President Yoweri Museveni is expected to return as leader for his sixth term after a court endorsed a law removing an age limit for the country’s president.

Prime Minister Theresa May meets President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda during the London Conference on Somalia at Lancaster House on May 11, 2017 in London. (Photo by Hannah McKay – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Museveni, 75, took power by force in 1986 and declared himself president. He’s been re-elected several times since, though international observers have noted issues with the polling process in several elections.

Iran

Iran’s second Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wields exceptional power over the country. Before taking the position in 1989, he served as the president, a largely ceremonial role.

In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with Iranian officials, participants of the 31st International Islamic Unity Conference and ambassadors from Islamic countries, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. Khamenei condemned President Donald Trump’s imminent recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

Khamenei, 80, is considered Iran’s most powerful figure and has control over its branches of government, military and the media. He is the second-longest serving autocrat in the Middle East and the second-longest serving leader in Iran in the last century, after the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Other mentions:

Deceased North Korean founder Kim Il-sung ruled his rouge state for 46 years before dying in 1994 while in office.

Albania’s Enver Hoxha remained in power for four decades before his 1985 death, and Fidel Castro came to power in the 1959 Cuban revolution. The deceased leader handed the presidency to his brother Raul in 2008.

Source: Fox News

Daniel arap Moi, the autocratic president of Kenya from 1978 to 2002, who ruled his East African nation in a postcolonial era of political repression, economic stagnation and notorious corruption, but in the end gave up power peacefully, died on Tuesday at Nairobi Hospital in the capital. He was 95. 

President Uhuru Kenyatta, who announced the death, declared a period of national mourning and said Mr. Moi would receive a state funeral. His statement did not specify a cause of death.

Fifteen years after Kenya won independence from Britain in 1963, Mr. Moi became president on the death of Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s founding father. Mr. Moi, a former schoolteacher and national legislator, had been a handpicked vice president and served in Mr. Kenyatta’s long shadow.

Unlike the imperial Mr. Kenyatta, who governed behind closed doors, Mr. Moi traveled the country, courting its ethnic and tribal groups and gaining wide popularity. He introduced free milk for children, and pledged to do away with endemic graft and elevate Kenya’s struggling tourism-and-agriculture economy. He won Western support with anticommunist policies during the Cold War.

But after suppressing opposition and consolidating power in a single-party state, he began a 24-year dictatorial reign. Mr. Moi — with his nimbus of silver hair, buttonhole rose and ivory walking stick — dominated life in Kenya. He put his face on bank notes, ordered his portrait hung in offices and shops, enriched his family and tribal cronies and, as investigations showed, stashed billions in overseas banks. For much of his tenure, it was illegal even to speak ill of him.

Kenya remained an island of political stability in East Africa, but a democracy in name only, and a land of stark contrasts: dire poverty and fabulous wealth, natural beauty and decaying infrastructures, luxury safaris for foreigners and vast slums for Kenyans, who faced unemployment, crime, epidemic AIDS and one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates.

Mr. Moi won five successive elections. In 1979, 1983 and 1988, he and his Kenya African National Union ran unopposed. Although some 1,000 people died in clashes over constitutional reforms, multiparty elections were held in 1992 and 1997. But the opposition was divided and disorganized, the balloting was marred by widespread violence, and Mr. Moi was re-elected both times.

As the head of state and government, he exercised absolute power. The post-independence constitution vested legislative authority in a National Assembly and provided for an independent judiciary. But Mr. Moi had the right to dismiss judges and other officials, and he and his party controlled legislation and the courts, overriding decisions and suppressing democratic reforms.

Opposition led by intellectuals arose. But Mr. Moi, who also controlled the news media and the police and military services, and whose pronouncements had the force of law, closed the universities and suppressed his opponents with detentions, torture and killings, according to United Nations investigators and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Africa Watch.

Official corruption, abuse of power and a deteriorating economy exploded in 1982 in an attempted coup by low-ranking air force officers. But army loyalists crushed the uprising and Mr. Moi ordered the arrest of the entire 2,100-member air force. Hundreds were imprisoned or executed, and the service’s ranks were replaced. He also ordered all civil servants to join the ruling political party, of which he was president.

Despite Western military and economic aid and income from tourists drawn to Kenya’s game preserves, the economy lagged for most of Mr. Moi’s tenure, mired in corruption that affected all manner of transactions, from cab rides and the delivery of goods and services to bribery and kickbacks in public and private dealings.

Investigations after Mr. Moi stepped down found that his government had lined the pockets of his family and its allies with as much as $4 billion. The biggest fraud in Kenya’s history, the Goldenberg affair, in which the central bank paid incentives to a company for exporting gold, diamonds and jewelry that did not exist, cost taxpayers billions and sent Kenya’s economy into a tailspin in the early 1990s.

When he was still vice president, Mr. Moi met President Jimmy Carter at the White House in 1978, and after becoming president he met President Ronald Reagan there in 1981 and 1987 (when he also met Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London). But after the Cold War, the West no longer regarded Kenya as a strategic outpost, and Mr. Moi was increasingly seen as a despot.

Constitutionally barred from running in the 2002 elections, he agreed to give up power in a smooth transfer that was then still rare in Africa. He supported a son of Jomo Kenyatta, but Mwai Kibaki, who had lost to Mr. Moi in 1992 and 1997, and who was nearly killed in a traffic accident during the campaign, won the presidency by a 2-to-1 margin. Mr. Moi later supported his old opponent’s re-election.

As Mr. Moi retired, his successors found even more corruption and human rights abuses than had been suspected. A 2003 inquiry exposed torture cells at Nyayo House in Nairobi, a government building where dungeons yielded evidence supporting the accounts of victims.

Mr. Moi was never prosecuted, though corruption inquiries implicated him and his family. Kenya in 2003 found $1 billion in stolen funds in overseas accounts. Others in his administration were pursued, but Mr. Moi was treated as an elder statesman.

“We recognize that former President Daniel arap Moi is an important democratic commodity, not only for us, but for Africa,” Mr. Kibaki’s anticorruption chief, John Githongo, told The New York Times in 2003. “He is treated special. He is different. He’s just not any other guy.”

He was born Toroitich  arap (son of) Moi on Sept. 2, 1924, in Kuriengwo, a Rift Valley village in Western Kenya. His father, a herdsman, died when the boy was 4. In a nation dominated by the Kikuyu tribe and its chief rival, the Luo, the Moi family belonged to the Kalenjin minority, one of several dozen tribal groups.

At the African Mission School at Kabartonjo, Mr. Moi became a Christian and adopted the name Daniel. He graduated from Kapsabet Teacher Training College; from 1945 to 1947, he taught classes, and he was later the headmaster of a government school.

He married Helena Bommet in 1950. They had five sons and two daughters, and adopted a daughter. The couple separated in 1974. His wife, known as Lena, died in 2004.

He did not join the Kikuyu-led Mau Mau rebellion against British rule in the 1950s, but sympathized with the movement and once harbored five fugitives at his home. He entered politics in 1955, appointed by the British to the colonial Legislative Council. Two years later, when black Kenyans were allowed to vote, he was elected to the council.

In 1960, he joined a London conference that drew up a Kenyan constitution authorizing African political parties. He was elected assistant treasurer of the new Kenya African National Union (KANU), the political instrument of independence, which later merged with the rival Kenya African Democratic Union he helped found and became the sole political party.

In the new government, Mr. Kenyatta appointed Mr. Moi minister of home affairs in 1964 and vice president in 1967. He handled day-to-day government affairs and represented Kenya at the Organization of African Unity, the first continent-wide association of independent states, and other international forums.

Mr. Moi lacked the Kenyatta magnetism and was little known abroad until he became president, but was moderately popular at home. Many Kenyans regarded Mr. Moi as puritanical because he did not drink alcohol or smoke, denounced hippies and miniskirts, led Kenya’s Boy Scouts and recited aphorisms against materialism and acquisitiveness.

After leaving the presidency, he lived quietly, largely shunned by Kenya’s political establishment, but drew crowds in public. In 2005, he opposed a new constitution, which was defeated in a referendum. In 2007, he was named a special envoy to Sudan.

Source: New York Times

Iran is no longer sharing evidence from the investigation into the Ukraine airliner crash that killed 176 people with Kiev after audio from the investigation was leaked by Ukrainian media, the director in charge of accident investigations at Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization was quoted as saying on Monday.

The audio file was part of the evidence given to Ukrainian experts as part of the joint investigative team’s examination of the crash.

“The technical investigation team of the Ukrainian airline crash, in a strange move, published the secret audio file of the communications of a pilot of a plane that was flying at the same time as the Ukrainian plane,” Iran’s Hassan Rezaifar said, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency.

“This action by the Ukrainians led to us not sharing any more evidence with them.”

‘Dear engineer, it was an explosion’

The announcement followed a leaked recording of an exchange between an Iranian air-traffic controller and an Iranian pilot purporting to show that authorities immediately knew a missile had downed a Ukrainian jetliner after takeoff from Tehran, despite days of denials by the Islamic Republic.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the recording’s authenticity in a report aired by a Ukrainian television channel on Sunday night.

In Tehran on Monday, Rezaifar acknowledged the recording was legitimate and said that it was handed over to Ukrainian officials.

After the January 8 air disaster, Iran’s civilian government maintained for days that it didn’t know the country’s Revolutionary Guard, answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had shot down the aircraft. The downing of the jetliner came just hours after the Revolutionary Guard launched a ballistic missile attack on Iraqi bases housing US forces in retaliation for an earlier US drone strike that killed the Guard’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad.

A transcript of the recording, published by the Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel, contains a conversation in Farsi between an air-traffic controller and a pilot reportedly flying a Fokker 100 jet for Iran’s Aseman Airlines from Iran’s southern city of Shiraz to Tehran.

“A series of lights like…yes, it is missile, is there something?” the pilot calls out to the controller.

“No, how many miles? Where?” the controller asks.

The pilot responds that he saw the light near the city of Payam, near where the Guard’s Tor M-1 anti-aircraft missile was launched. The controller says nothing has been reported to them, but the pilot remains insistent.

“It is the light of missile,” the pilot says.

“Don’t you see anything anymore?” the controller asks.

“Dear engineer, it was an explosion. We saw a very big light there, I don’t really know what it was,” the pilot responds.

The controller then tries to contact the Ukrainian jetliner, but unsuccessfully.

‘The Iranian side knew’

Publicly accessible flight-tracking radar information suggests the Aseman Airlines aircraft, flight No. 3768, was close enough to Tehran to see the blast.

Iranian civil aviation authorities for days insisted it wasn’t a missile that brought down the Ukrainian plane, even after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US officials began saying they believed it had been shot down.

Iranian officials should have immediately had access to the air-traffic control recordings and Zelensky told 1+1 that “the recording, indeed, shows that the Iranian side knew from the start that our plane was shot down by a missile, they were aware of this at the moment of the shooting”.

Ukraine’s president repeated his demands to decode the plane’s flight recorders in Kiev – something Iranian officials had promised last month but later backtracked on. On Monday, Ukrainian investigators were to travel to Tehran to participate in the decoding effort, but Zelensky insisted on bringing the so-called “black boxes” back to Kiev.

“It is very important for us,” he said.

Iranian authorities, however, have condemned the publication of the recording as “unprofessional”, saying it was part of a confidential report.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)

The UN Security Council on Friday approved a slight relaxation of the arms embargo on the Central African Republic, an issue that has been a source of friction between France and Russia.

A resolution drafted by France that extends the embargo by only six months to July 31 was approved by 13 votes with Russia and China abstaining.

It allows the CAR to acquire military vehicles mounted with up to 14.5mm weapons, provided the United Nations is notified ahead of time.

According to the diplomats, negotiations on the draft were held amid sharp tensions between France and Russia.

A former colonial power, France did not want any easing of the embargo in light of conditions in the country, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The European and African members of the council supported France’s draft, but Russia, backed by China, supported Bangui’s longstanding call for the embargo to be completely lifted.

Moscow this week proposed a concurrent resolution to France’s. However, a compromise was worked out on Thursday that avoided a vote on two resolutions, and the risk that the embargo would be lifted entirely.

France’s deputy representative to the United Nations, Anne Gueguen, said she “profoundly” regretted that the resolution was not unanimously adopted.

She said the Security Council is receptive to the CAR authorities but stressed the need for a “responsible approach.”

– Six month extension –

Her Russian counterpart, Dmitry Polyanskiy, complained that none of Moscow’s arguments had been taken into account, and he warned these would be raised again in July, indicating the Security Council fight over the embargo would resume in six months.

“We wanted a greater easing of the arms embargo,” he said, arguing that while it was useful initially it had become an obstacle to re-equipping the military and security forces.

Niger’s ambassador Abdou Abarry, speaking also on behalf of South Africa and Tunisia, said the resolution represented a response to the CAR’s legitimate demand to move towards the lifting of the arms embargo.

He said the easing of the embargo would help the CAR’s government to retake control of the entire country.

The United States noted that Bangui had made no requests for exemptions to the embargo since September, even though the possibility was open to it.

The latest relaxation of the embargo follows a Security Council decision in September 2019 to allow delivery of individual weapons of up to 14.5mm in caliber to the CAR security forces, which was the first time an easing occurred.

The embargo has been in place since 2013, when the CAR was rocked by civil war following the fall of president Francois Bozize.

But the government has long demanded that it be lifted altogether, contending that armed groups continue to control vast areas of the country and can easily resupply their forces through contraband, putting Bangui at a disadvantage.

Since 2017, exceptions to the embargo have been accorded by the United Nations on a case by case basis, including when Russia and France gave arms to the CAR.

Source: AFP

The White House has warned former national security adviser John Bolton not to publish his book containing evidence about President Donald Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival.

National Security Council officials sent a letter to Bolton’s lawyer, saying the unpublished book “appears to contain significant amounts of classified information” and couldn’t be published as written.

The “top secret” information “reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security,” the letter read.

Bolton has reportedly written in his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” that Trump demanded Ukraine investigate political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, in exchange for millions of dollars in military assistance to the European nation, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Under the commencement Bolton made when he accepted the job as Trump’s national security adviser, “the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” according to the letter.

The manuscript was sent to the Nationals Security Council (NSC) a month ago for a standard review.

The Trump administration officials said the president and his legal team have not seen the manuscript and did not participate in the review.

Bolton’s attorney Charles Cooper disputed the claim about “top secret” information, saying that “any of that information could reasonable be considered classified.”

The NSC, however, said it would work with Bolton on revisions to the book.

The dispute between the White House and Bolton comes as the news of the book prompted demands for Bolton’s testimony in the Senate impeachment trial.

Bolton said he would be willing to testify in the Senate trial if subpoenaed.

Trump, however, has threatened to assert executive privilege and block Bolton’s testimony, if necessary.

In a Twitter message on Wednesday, Trump attacked Bolton’s reputation as a military hawk, describing the book as “nasty and untrue.”

Trump fired Bolton in September last year, over what he said had been “disagreements with many of his suggestions.”

Source: Presstv

French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly warned Monday that expected cuts to the Pentagon’s African operations would hamper efforts against jihadist groups, especially in the Sahel region.

But US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper made clear that the United States was prepared to reduce its global military footprint and that African operations could be affected — while giving no details about how severely.

“US support is critical to our operations, and its reduction would severely limit our effectiveness in our operations against terrorists,” Parly said in a joint news conference with Esper in Washington.

“Our friends in the Sahel are in a situation where our assistance is critical. And I have expressed the hope of both the United States and France will keep on supporting them,” she added.

Esper has launched a review of the US military footprint around the world and is expected to reduce the presence of US forces in West Africa, where they have partnered with the French in battling a rise in Islamic extremist groups in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and other countries.

The US Defense Department wants to focus its forces on what it sees as priority threats, starting with China and Russia.

Washington has been a key ally for France’s 4,500-member Barkhane operation, providing intelligence and surveillance via drones as well as in-flight refueling and logistical transport, at a cost of $45 million a year.

Esper declined to say what cuts he was considering in Africa, which according to reports could include shutting down a US drone base in the region.

“France has been a great leader in the Sahel,” Esper told reporters.

“I think it’s time for other European allies to assist as well in the region, and that could offset whatever changes we make as we consider next steps in Africa.”

Source:  AFP