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| Saturday, January
28, 2012, 10:10 AM |
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| France
has decided to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2013. |
France
will gradually pull its combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of
2013, President Nicolas Sarkozy said, speeding up the withdrawal of NATO’s
fourth-largest contingent in the Asian country. France will leave a “few
hundred” soldiers in Afghanistan in 2014 to help train the Afghan
army, he said. |
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French soldiers from the 27ème bataillon de chasseurs alpins and
French Task Force Tiger patrol the many valleys of Kapisa province, Afghanistan.
(Archive image)
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Sarkozy’s
decision was announced after a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai
in Paris, where the leaders discussed the French military’s future
in the country after Afghan soldiers killed five French soldiers in two
incidents within the past month. France previously had planned to follow
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s calendar of a withdrawal
of all foreign troops during 2014.
“We
are not an occupation force,” Sarkozy said. “We have confidence
in the ability of President Karzai.”
Sarkozy
said he’d ask NATO to consider passing control of all combat missions
to the Afghan National Army by the end of 2013. France has 3,900 troops
in Afghanistan, and 82 have been killed since their arrival in 2001, the
fourth-highest death toll after the U.S., Britain and Canada.
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