French backpedal on Afghan withdrawal threat as Karzai visits Paris

Karzai and Sarkozy are to sign a 20-year cooperation treaty, which will be reveiewed every five years, covering defence, security, education and other questions.

Dossier: AfPak news and analysis

But more immediate matters are on Karzai’s mind thanks to Sarkozy’s reaction to the deaths of four French soldiers, who were killed by an Afghan army recruit they were training.

The French suspended training of Afghan troops after the deaths, although cooperation in other fields continued, and called for tighter controls over cooperation with the Afghan National Army.

Sarkozy also said that France might pull out its troops earlier than the 2014 departure date set by Nato.

Since then, however, French rhetoric has calmed down.

“We will not give in to panic,” Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppé told parliament on Tuesday, saying that their should not be a “rushed withdrawal”.

And Defence Minister Gérard Longuet on Friday declared, “We have two years in front of us to organise a complete transition.”

Paris will ask Nato to adapt its procedures to new threats on the ground, Longuet said, pointing to an increase in attacks by men in Afghan army uniform as evidence that the Taliban have changed tactics since the announcement of the 2014 departure date.

Withdrawing France’s 3,600 troops might be relatively simple, retired general Franck Desportes told RFI, but bringing home the equipment would take much longer.

“There are 1,300 vehicles left there,” he said. “Our best equipment, our infantry armoured vehicles, our César guns, our best Tigre helicopters. All that takes time to repatriate […] probably not less than 18 months.”

A French withdrawal would throw the whole international effort off kilter, Desportes argues.

“That could harm the friendship that ties us to the coalition and in particular to the Americans.”

Sarkozy's Socialist rival in this year's presidential election, François Hollande, has pledged to bring the troops home before the deadline.

Nato Secretary General Anders Forgh Rasmussen on Thursday reminded France that it had agreed to the timetable at the Lisbon summit in 2010. 

"We gave the general outline of our plan of action and it is important for the success of our operations to maintain our commitment to this plan," he said.