France To Beef up Afghanistan Mission

France To Beef up Afghanistan Mission (NSI News Source Info) PARIS - September 23, 2008: France announced Sept. 22 it will beef up its mission in Afghanistan with helicopters, drones and other military means amid debate over whether 10 French soldiers killed there were poorly equipped. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said France had "learned the lessons" from last month's Taliban ambush that left 10 soldiers dead and 21 wounded, the country's worst military losses in 25 years. "We have decided to strengthen our military means in the areas of air mobility, intelligence and support," Fillon said at the opening of a parliament debate on whether to keep French troops in Afghanistan. The National Assembly voted in favor of continuing the mission, with the majority from President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing party easily overriding objections from the Socialists. Fillon said transport and attack helicopters, drones, surveillance equipment, mortars and 100 additional troops necessary for the beefed-up operation will be deployed. The reinforcements will be in place in a few weeks, he added. But the prime minister denied a report in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper that the 30 French soldiers were no match for the better-equipped and trained Taliban fighters who attacked them on August 18 in the mountains east of Kabul. The newspaper quoted a secret NATO report stating that the paratroopers had run out of ammunition after only 90 minutes and had only one radio that was quickly knocked out, leaving them unable to call in air support. "The reality is cruel enough without adding lies and disinformation," Fillon said. There was no loss of radio contact and the troops were "always able to respond" to Taliban firepower, he added. Both NATO and the French military denied the existence of any such report, saying the newspaper was referring to a leaked email sent by an officer to NATO command in Kabul that gave a partial account of the ambush. France's armed forces chief of staff Jean-Louis Georgelin said it came from a member of a U.S. special forces unit that was patrolling with the French troops before the ambush. The mountain ambush was the deadliest ground attack on international troops since they were sent to Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the hardline Taliban regime. The National Assembly approved by a vote of 343 to 210 a motion to maintain the 2,600-strong French contingent in Afghanistan, one of the largest serving in the NATO-led mission. Socialist minority leader Jean-Marc Ayrault said France was being dragged into a "war of occupation" although he acknowledged that it could not "suddenly disengage from Afghanistan." The Senate, which is also dominated by the governing right, was to hold a similar vote on the Afghan mission later Monday. About 70,000 international troops - 40,000 of them under NATO command - are helping Afghans fight the Taliban who were ousted from Kabul in a U.S.-led invasion launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Critics point to France's involvement in Afghanistan as a worrying sign of French alignment with U.S. policy under Sarkozy, who is considered pro-American compared to his predecessor Jacques Chirac. Heightening concerns is the unstable situation in neighboring Pakistan, where a suicide bomb attack at an Islamabad hotel killed 60 people on Saturday. Fillon called on Pakistan to do more to secure control over the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and said France wanted to "broaden its political and security relations" with Islamabad. The prime minister also called on allies to redouble their efforts to avoid civilian casualties during attacks on the Taliban. "A bomb must not create more enemies than it eliminates," he said.