Stéphane de Sakutin, AFP | French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and US President Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Sicily on May 26, 2017

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday accepted an invitation from his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to attend the traditional Bastille Day military parade on July 14, despite public differences between the two world leaders.

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Trump has accepted to attend France’s national holiday festivities as part of the commemoration marking the 100th anniversary of the entry of the United States into World War I, the Élysée presidential palace said in a statement.

“To mark the occasion, American soldiers will take part in the parade alongside their French brothers in arms,” the Élysée added.

The invitation was extended the previous day during a telephone call, in which the two presidents also agreed on a joint military response against Damascus in the event of a chemical attack in war-torn Syria.

After a tense start of their relations, with a weird handshake, #Trump and Macron also agreed yesterday to cooperate on Syria pic.twitter.com/2VKoKdfs2j — Guy Elster (@guyelster) June 28, 2017

The 39-year-old Macron made his mark on the international stage when he gave Trump a white-knuckle handshake at a NATO summit on May 25.

He later mocked Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change.

Macron's English-language appeal to "make our planet great again" – a riff on Trump's own slogan of making America great again – became a social media hit.

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