President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday sent his army chief to Afghanistan to draw up new security measures for French troops there after six more were killed this week in the war-torn country. The move came after Sarkozy summoned government ministers and military top brass to an emergency meeting on the Bastille Day to try to find ways to keep France's 4,000 troops safe before they quit Afghanistan by 2014.
"We are now faced more with terrorist-type actions, not only military action," he said before the meeting. "Faced with this new context and to face this new context, we need new security measures." Speaking to reporters on the Champs Elysees as he inspected the Bastille Day military parade attended by tens of thousands of people, he reiterated that the French troop withdrawal would begin this year and would be complete by 2014.
He repeated that, as agreed with France's Nato allies, responsibility for security in Afghanistan would be progressively handed over to the Afghans themselves. Shortly after Sarkozy spoke at the parade on France's national holiday, his office announced that a French navy commando was killed by insurgents Thursday during an operation alongside Afghan police in Kapisa province, east of Kabul. That brought to 70 the number of French soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since 2001, when they deployed to support the US-led campaign to overthrow the Taliban regime and hunt al Qaeda militants. French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said after Thursday's emergency meeting that the head of the French army, General Elrick Irastorza, was about to leave for Afghanistan to assess the situation after the latest deaths.
Comments
Comments are closed.