Sarkozy threatens Afghan pullout after four French soldiers killed.

The New York Times - President Nicolas Sarkozy, of France, suspended military training and assistance for Afghan forces on Friday and said he would consider an early withdrawal from Afghanistan after an Afghan soldier shot and killed four French soldiers on a base in eastern Afghanistan.

The attack was the latest in a series of episodes in which Afghan soldiers or police officers, or insurgents wearing official uniforms, have opened fire on soldiers of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

The killings are intended to hasten the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan sooner than an agreed NATO deadline of the end of 2014, when Afghan forces are supposed to be ready to defend the country on their own. More of the attacks have also been born of simmering animosity between coalition forces and the Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train.

With many European countries facing unprecedented economic pressures at home, such attacks by Afghan soldiers on foreign troops have added to public questioning of the value of continued involvement in Afghanistan. If France were to reduce its troops early or precipitously, it could spur other countries to follow suit, Western and Afghan officials said.

France has been a firm ally of the United States in Afghanistan, with the fourth-largest contingent of troops, according to NATO figures, and 82 French soldiers have died, many of them killed fighting in Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan, where Friday's shooting occurred.

Facing a fierce battle for his re-election, Sarkozy said security had better improve in Afghanistan, if French troops were going to stay.

"If security conditions are not established clearly, then the question of an early return of the French army will arise," he told diplomats in a foreign-affairs speech at the Élysée Palace. "It will be a difficult decision that we will have to take in the coming days, but I have to do it while being able to face the French public and our soldiers."

Sarkozy's main rival, Socialist Party candidate François Hollande, who is leading in the polls for the spring vote, immediately repeated his call for French troops to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of the year, a break with NATO solidarity.

The sense of French wavering was felt strongly in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. Sarkozy's talk of leaving early, even if rhetorical, "is not very good in terms of alliance cohesion," said a Western official in Kabul, speaking on the condition of anonymity. An early French withdrawal could lay bare "real cracks in the coalition" at a time the alliance is seeking a cohesive position to end the war.

Friday's episode was the second fatal attack in a month involving an Afghan soldier firing on French troops. On Dec. 29, two French soldiers were killed by a man wearing an Afghan uniform, who was shot dead.

On Friday, the gunman turned his weapon on unarmed French troops, according to an Afghan police official in Kapisa province and Lt. Col. Michel Sabatier, a spokesman for French forces in Afghanistan.

Sabatier said the 35 French troops, embedded with Afghans at a base in Gwan, were not wearing body armor when the Afghan soldier opened fire. The gunman is in custody, a NATO official said. Eight of the 15 wounded were in serious condition.