France's Hollande defends early Afghan pullout
by Mirwais Harooni

Reuters    Translate This Article
25 May 2012

KABUL (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan on Friday to visit some of the French troops he wants to pull out later this year, defending his plan for their early exit after meeting his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai.

Hollande was strongly criticised at a NATO summit last weekend for accelerating France's withdrawal of its roughly 3,400 troops in Afghanistan to the end of this year, two years ahead of the timetable agreed by the alliance.

'The mission of fighting terrorism and chasing out the Taliban is close to being accomplished, and this is something we can be very proud of,' Hollande told journalists at an outdoor press conference in Karzai's garden palace.

'We will stay in Afghanistan but with a different role, our cooperation will focus on civilian fronts,' he said.

The drawdown, a promise to voters during Hollande's election campaign following successive attacks by rogue Afghan soldiers on French mentors, breaks with the NATO timetable for a withdrawal of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

It raised concern that other alliance nations may follow France's example and accelerate their withdrawal plans, handing security prematurely to fledgling Afghan forces.

At last weekend's meeting of NATO allies in Chicago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised the early withdrawal, saying she wanted a unified pullout under the alliance's existing strategy of 'in together, out together'.

Some 2,000 French troops are due to leave this year but some will remain to provide support and training, and to look after equipment. France has 14 helicopters, 900 vehicles and 1,400 containers that need to be taken out via road and plane.

Visiting French forces at their base in volatile Kapisa province, Hollande thanked them for what they had done for France and Afghanistan, and promised the pullout would be 'orderly' and done in 'close coordination with France's allies'.

He also paid homage to the 83 French soldiers killed in the war, now dragging into its 11th year.

'The time has come for Afghan sovereignty. The terrorist threat that targeted our territory has not completely disappeared, but it has been partially suppressed,' Hollande said.

France has been asked to contribute just under $200 million a year for long-term funding for Afghanistan, part of an annual bill estimated at $4.1 billion to maintain Afghan forces after 2014. Hollande has signalled that he will commit to nothing until it is clear how the money will be managed.

As well as training Afghan forces, France could also set up a medical college and some kind of cultural or archaeological centre, Hollande said, as well as aid the Afghan government with housing, energy, oil research and crucial agriculture aid.

(Addition reporting by Patrick Vignal and Elizabeth Pineau in PARIS and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL; Writing by Catherine Bremer and Rob Taylor; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

© Copyright 2012 Reuters

Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. 'Reuters' and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. For additional information on other Reuters media services please visit reuters.com/newsagency.

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world from good news reported by the press; and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based-Total Knowledge based-programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.



Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google) Select a language English to Afrikaans English to Albanian English to Arabic English to Belarusian English to Bulgarian English to Catalan English to Chinese (Simplified) English to Chinese (Traditional) English to Croatian English to Czech English to Danish English to Dutch English to Estonian English to Filipino English to Finnish English to French English to Galician English to German English to Greek English to Hebrew English to Hindi English to Hungarian English to Icelandic English to Indonesian English to Irish English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Latvian English to Lithuanian English to Macedonian English to Malay English to Maltese English to Norwegian English to Persian English to Polish English to Portuguese English to Romanian English to Russian English to Serbian English to Slovak English to Slovenian English to Spanish English to Swahili English to Swedish English to Thai English to Turkish English to Ukrainian English to Vietnamese English to Welsh English to Yiddish

(Altavista babelfish) Select a languageEnglish to Chinese-simpEnglish to Chinese-tradEnglish to DutchEnglish to PortugueseEnglish to FrenchEnglish to GermanEnglish to GreekEnglish to ItalianEnglish to JapaneseEnglish to KoreanEnglish to RussianEnglish to Spanish

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.