BERLIN, July 29 (Xinhua) -- The German government's transatlantic coordinator Peter Beyer criticized on Wednesday the plan of U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany.
A reduction of U.S. troops was "not in the security interest of Germany or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)," Beyer announced on Twitter. The plan would "make no geopolitical sense" for the United States either.
Beyer also criticized how the withdrawal of the U.S. troops had been communicated. "In a negative sense, it was unprecedented that the German government initially only found out about the withdrawal ideas from the newspapers," Beyer told the German Press Agency (dpa) on Wednesday.
"Afterwards we were held up for a week, there was no further information, although the German government tried to find out more through all channels," Beyer added. "Such a thing should not happen again in the German-American friendship that is actually very good and vital."
Beyer made his statement ahead of the announcement of U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on Wednesday to withdraw a total of 11,900 military personnel from Germany. Around 6,400 U.S. soldiers would be sent home while almost 5,600 would be relocated from Germany to other NATO countries, according to Esper.
Criticizing Berlin's "delinquency" on military spending, Trump last month ordered the U.S. military to withdraw 9,500 troops from Germany. Currently, about 36,000 U.S. troops are deployed in the European country. Enditem
