Tulle, France: French President Francois Hollande said the country’s troops will begin to pull out from Afghanistan from the next month and the process will be completed by the end of this year, after Taliban attack claimed lives of four French troops.
Hollande said France would pay a “national homage” to the men killed in a suicide bombing and that five wounded soldiers would be repatriated rapidly, AFP reported.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, France defence minister, will head to Afghanistan on Sunday.
Hollande said the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan, one of his presidential campaign pledges, “will begin in the month of July, will be carried out and be completed at the end of 2012.”
“In the meantime, everything must be done for our troops to meet their obligations but with the highest level of security and with the greatest vigilance for the lives of the soldiers.
“I am making this engagement here and I will be the guarantor for this operation,” Hollande said in the central town of Tulle, where he was to attend a commemoration of the massacre of civilians by the Nazis on June 9, 1944.
He added that the attack “does not change anything, it neither accelerates nor delays” withdrawal plans.
While some have called for the pullout to be sped up, “it is not possible to go faster,” he said.
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