Sarkozy: France to Pull 100s of Troops from Afghanistan This Year
President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday that "several hundred" French troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan before the end of 2011.
"Between now and the end of the year, early next year, several hundred French soldiers will return to France in full agreement with the decision taken by the American president," Sarkozy told a news conference at the close of a two-day European Union summit.
His office had said Thursday that France would carry out a progressive pullback of its 4,000 troops "in a proportional manner and in a timeframe similar to the pullback of the American reinforcements."
U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday ordered all 33,000 U.S. surge troops home from Afghanistan by next summer and declared the beginning of the end of the war, saying the withdrawal would begin this July.
Sarkozy said he shared Obama's belief that security had improved since the death of Osama bin Laden and that the handover to Afghan troops and police was taking smoothly.
Should the situation improve, the pullout of all Western combat troops in 2014 might be "brought forward", he said.
Source: Agence France Presse
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