LONDON (AFP) - President Nicolas Sarkozy will tell British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during a state visit next week that he plans to send an extra 1,000 French soldiers to Afghanistan, the Times reported Saturday.
One anonymous senior minister told the paper that Britain's Ministry of Defence is working on the assumption that Sarkozy will reveal a deployment of "slightly more than 1,000 troops to the eastern region" to fight the Taliban.
Sarkozy wants to underline his commitment to NATO during the visit but a formal announcement may not be made until a NATO summit in Bucharest next month, the paper said.
The United States has strongly and consistently urged other NATO countries to bolster their troop contributions in Afghanistan, charging that some nations are not pulling their weight.
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