U.S.: French Withdrawal from Afghanistan Up to Paris

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The United States offered condolences after four unarmed French troops were killed by an Afghan soldier Friday and said it was up to France whether to bring its forces home from Afghanistan early.

"We mourn for their losses today, but those are decisions that only the French government and the French people can make," Navy Captain John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's warning of a possible early withdrawal.

"Their contributions are theirs to determine and theirs to amend as they see fit," Kirby said, calling the French "great allies and great friends."

Sarkozy suspended military training and joint operations with the Afghans after the Afghan soldier opened fire on the French troops while they were finishing a sports work-out, killing four and wounding 15.

He dispatched his defense minister to Afghanistan to investigate and warned that France may decide to accelerate the withdrawal of France's 3,600 troops in the country.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said French forces had served with "valor and honor" in Afghanistan, but did not comment on the French leader's remarks.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wendy Sherman, the under secretary for political affairs, had discussed the incident in Washington with her French counterpart Jacques Audibert.

"I will expect we will also be in touch at the highest levels as well, maybe today," Nuland added.

During a press appearance with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed "our deepest condolences" over the deaths of the French soldiers as well as the deaths of more U.S. troops.

Deployed mainly in the provinces of Kabul and Kapisa, the scene of Friday's shooting, the French forces are currently scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2013.

The incident was the latest in a string of attacks by allied Afghan forces on U.S. and NATO soldiers, which a classified report leaked to the New York Times said reflected a "systemic" problem and not just isolated incidents.

Between May 2007 and May 2011, at least 58 U.S. and NATO personnel were killed in 26 attacks by Afghan soldiers and the police, the classified 70-page report said, according to The Times.

It includes an April 2011 incident in which an Afghan Air Force colonel killed eight U.S. officers and a contractor with shots to the head inside their headquarters.

"We believe that they do appear to be increasing in frequency in recent months. What we can't discern is a cause for that," said Kirby.

"We're certainly concerned about these incidents and ISAF officials are taking a look at it. But we also don't believe that this is an endemic or systemic problem. The great majority of partnered operations, and frankly most our operations are partnered, are done successfully, smoothly, efficiently," he said.

The report emphasizes the killings are the result of a decade of contempt that each side has for each other, and profound ill will among both civilians and militaries on both sides. It downplayed the role of Taliban infiltrators in the incidents.

"Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history)," the report said, according to The Times.

Official NATO statements downplaying the incidents "seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest," said the report.