France is set to send 700 soldiers to Afghan Kapisa province near Kabul where most of the other French forces are being stationed.

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the extra troops, on top of about 1,670 already in the country, at a NATO summit in Bucharest but did not say where they would be deployed.

It has been decided they would go to Kapisa northeast of the capital, French military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Frederic Thomazo told AFP. They are due to arrive in July or August.

Kapisa does not see the levels of insurgent unrest that blight the rest of eastern Afghanistan but there are regular incidents, particularly in the strategic Tagab area about 50 kilometers from Kabul.

France will also send military instructors to train the Afghan army in the southern province of Uruzgan, a Taliban stronghold, and is due in the coming months to take the rotating NATO command for the capital region.

Most of the French troops in Afghanistan work in Kabul and there are about 170 in the southern city of Kandahar where six French fighter jets are stationed.

AO/BGH