Killing of French troops ‘individual action’: Karzai

The killing of four French troops by an Afghan army soldier was “an isolated and individual action” and did not represent the anger of the Afghan people, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday.
Karzai was speaking after meeting French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet who flew to Kabul in the wake of the shooting at a French base on Friday. The president “expressed his sadness” over the incident, a statement from the presidential palace said. “The attack against French forces by an Afghan army soldier does not represent the anger of Afghan people but it is just an isolated and individual action,” he said.
It was a matter of concern that for the second time “an Afghan army soldier turned his weapon on French soldiers” and the ministry of defence had been assigned to investigate the issue, the statement said.
The French defence minister said Saturday that he had been told that the Afghan soldier who killed the troops was a Taliban infiltrator, but Karzai did not mention this allegation. The Taliban say they are investigating to see whether the shooter had links with the insurgents, suggesting that some attacks by Afghan soldiers are prompted purely by patriotism and anger towards the “invading enemy”.
Longuet had thanked Karzai for his condolences “and assured his country’s continued assistance to Afghanistan”, the statement said. The defence minister had said “France will sign long term strategic treaty with the government of Afghanistan… and will continue its assistance to Afghanistan beyond 2014”, according to the statement. When news of the shooting broke on Friday an angry French President Nicholas Sarkozy warned that France could pull its troops out of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan before the planned withdrawal in 2014.
Earlier Sunday, Longuet and General John Allen, the US commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan, presided over a solemn repatriation ceremony for the bodies of the four French troops at a snowy Kabul airport. “The enemy will not hesitate to resort to the worst acts of treachery. Your mission was symbolic: to live with Afghan soldiers, to teach them and not to protect yourselves,” said NATO Lieutenant General Olivier de Bavinchove.
“You died for a just cause: for righteousness and freedom,” he said at the the ceremony attended by some 700 soldiers and Catholic and Protestant clerics. The four coffins, accompanied by photographs of the fallen soldiers, were draped in the French flag before being carried aloft into the snow-covered jet French presidential jet. Longuet held talks with Karzai, Allen and the Afghan interior and defence ministers on how better to protect French troops training Afghan soldiers as part of NATO’s mission. Six French soldiers have been shot dead in just three weeks by Afghans they were training.
Twelve of the 15 soldiers wounded in Friday’s attack have already been evacuated to France. Two others, too badly wounded to travel, are being treated in the American military hospital at Bagram base in Afghanistan. The last soldier is being treated at a French hospital in Afghanistan.