French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie will spend the New Year's Eve in Afghanistan with French soldiers deployed there, the Defense Ministry announced Thursday.

Alliot-Marie will go to Afghanistan on Dec. 30 and 31 to meet French forces in Kabul and elsewhere in the country, said the ministry's spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau.

The defense minister will talk with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said the spokesman, who added that French chief of staff General Henri Bentegeat would stay in Cote d'Ivoire on Dec. 23 and24 to visit the 5,000-strong French Unicorn troops there.

Source: Xinhua