France to withdraw special forces from Afghanistan

PARIS, Dec 17 (Reuters) France has decided to pull its special forces out of Afghanistan after a NATO-led stabilisation force extended operations to the whole country, the French defence ministry said today.

The contingent of 200 elite troops, operating under US command near the Pakistan border, will be withdrawn at the beginning of 2007, a spokesman said.

The announcement coincides with a visit to Afghanistan by Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, who told French radio it was part of a wider reorganisation of foreign troops.

France is part of a 32,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, which took over command of a war against the Taliban from US-led forces in October and has launched a series of military offensives.

France's special forces had been deployed in 2003 to bolster Operation Enduring Freedom, a separate US-led campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda launched in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

''We are reorganising our presence because ISAF has spread across the country and so we are also making a change, which is to withdraw our special forces from Jalalabad,'' Alliot-Marie told France Info radio.

She said France would instead step up training of the Afghan army, particularly its special forces.

Some 1,100 French troops will remain in the region of Kabul as part of the ISAF, the French defence ministry spokesman said.

Ten French troops have been killed since the conflict in Afghanistan started in October 2001. The majority belonged to the special forces unit based in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

REUTERS AB KP2115