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		</div><p>General Francois Lecointre has been nominated France&#8217;s military chief after his predecessor quit in a dispute with President Emmanuel Macron over budget cuts.</p>
<p>French government spokesman Christophe Castaner told reporters that President Macron has nominated Gen Lecointre as the new chief of staff of the armed forces, replacing Gen Pierre de Villiers.</p>
<p>Gen Lecointre served in Sarajevo during the Yugoslavia wars in the 1990s and recently led the EU military training mission in Mali to help fight Islamic extremists.</p>
<p>President Macron&#8217;s office sought to play down tensions over de Gen de Villiers departure, even as French defence commentators described their public dispute as a serious crisis.</p>
<p>Gen de Villiers&#8217; office said the general submitted his resignation to Mr Macron at a security council meeting on Wednesday and the president accepted.</p>
<p>President Macron&#8217;s office did not immediately comment.</p>
<p>Gen de Villiers lashed out at new spending curbs during a closed-door parliamentary commission meeting last week, according to leaked reports.</p>
<p>The dispute escalated over the past week, with Gen de Villiers issuing an appeal on Facebook saying &#8220;Watch out for blind trust&#8230; Because no one is without shortcomings, no one deserves to be blindly followed&#8221;.</p>
<p>Without naming him directly, President Macron then publicly admonished Gen de Villiers to military officials, saying, &#8220;it is not dignified to air certain debates in the public sphere. I made commitments (to budget cuts). I am your boss.&#8221;</p>
<p>President Macron&#8217;s own behaviour has elicited criticism, notably by those who accuse him of authoritarian tendencies after he overwhelmingly won election in May and saw his new centrist party dominate last month&#8217;s parliamentary elections.</p>
<figure id="attachment_115504" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-115504" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/PierredeVilliers_large.jpg"><img src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/PierredeVilliers_large.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="325" class="size-full wp-image-115504" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-115504" class="wp-caption-text">French Army Chief of Staff, General Pierre de Villiers, arrives at the Elysee Palace to attend an emergency security meeting in Paris, France.</figcaption></figure>
<p>The resignation foreshadows the battles Mr Macron will likely face as he tries to reduce the deficit and government spending and boost the stagnant economy.</p>
<p>While President Macron has promised to boost defence spending to 2% of GDP by 2025 as part of France&#8217;s commitments to Nato, his budget minister last week announced limits on this year&#8217;s military expenses as part of an overall spending squeeze.</p>
<p>Gen de Villiers, head of the military since 2014, insisted that it was his &#8220;duty&#8221; to express his concerns about military resources amid the sustained threat of extremist attacks.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;I have always taken care &#8230; to maintain a military model that guarantees the coherence between the threats that weigh on France and Europe, the missions of our armies that don&#8217;t stop growing, and the necessary budget means to fulfil them,&#8221;</i> he said his resignation statement.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;I no longer consider myself in a position to ensure the durability of the military model that I believe in, to guarantee the protection of France and the French,&#8221;</i> he said.</p>
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