The United States will send a delegation to Niger on Thursday to begin face-to-face talks with officials in Niamey on withdrawing the more than 1,000 American personnel in the military-ruled country.<\/p>\n
Niger has been a key base for regional counter-terrorism operations, but the government, a military junta that ousted the country\u2019s president last year said in March it was ending a military cooperation agreement with Washington.
\nThe United States said it had agreed to remove its troops last week and would send a delegation to Niamey within days.
\nAs part of ongoing negotiations, US Ambassador to Niger Kathleen FitzGibbon and a senior military officer for US Africa Command, Major General Ken Ekman, will meet with ruling government representatives on April 25 \u201cto initiate discussions on an orderly and responsible withdrawal of US forces from Niger,\u201d the State Department said Wednesday.
\nOther Defense Department officials will conduct follow-up meetings in Niamey next week, and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell will travel there \u201cin the coming months to discuss ongoing collaboration in areas of joint interest,\u201d State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
\nHe said the United States is proud of the security cooperation and \u201cshared sacrifice\u201d of US and Nigerien forces, and that it contributed to stability in the region.
\nBut since discussions began last year with the ruling National Committee for Safeguarding the Homeland (CNSP), \u201cwe have been unable to reach an understanding with the CNSP to continue that security cooperation in a manner that addresses the needs and concerns of each side,\u201d Miller said.
\nThis week US officials said there have not yet been changes to troop levels in Niger, a linchpin in the US and French strategy to combat extremists in West Africa and the location of a $100 million American drone base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States will send a delegation to Niger on Thursday to begin face-to-face talks with officials in Niamey on withdrawing the more than 1,000 American personnel in the military-ruled country. Niger has been a key base for regional counter-terrorism operations, but the government, a military junta that ousted the country\u2019s president last year said …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19802,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19796\/revisions\/19802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}