‘Completely unacceptable’: Merkel ally slams US decision to withdraw troops from Germany

Berlin’s coordinator for transatlantic ties, Peter Beyer, has criticized US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw thousands of troops from Germany.

Trump has ordered the US military to remove 9,500 of its troops, Reuters quoted a senior US official as saying on Friday.

“This is completely unacceptable, especially since nobody in Washington thought about informing its NATO ally Germany in advance,” Peter Beyer, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, told the Rheinische Post newspaper.

Following Trump’s decision, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in an interview that he regretted the planned withdrawal of US soldiers from Germany. Maas described Berlin’s relationship with the US as “complicated.”