Any new commitment by France to Afghanistan will be in the form of training local security forces and institutions, the French defense minister said Thursday.

The comments by Defense Minister Herve Morin came amid reports that the United States has asked France to send an additional 1,500 troops.

“If France was to make any additional commitment it will be in the form of training the Afghanistan army, police and the government institutions,” Morin told reporters in Langkawi, where he attended an annual air and naval show.

“France will take time to assess the situation in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that France’s contribution will be based on an internation meeting planned for London in January to discuss Afghanistan strategies.

Morin was speaking through an interpreter and did not elaborate.

On Wednesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy also said the January conference will help determine France’s response.

In a statement Wednesday, Sarkozy hailed President Barack Obama’s new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan as “courageous, determined and lucid” and pledged France’s full support. But he stopped short of committing additional French troops.

Obama announced Tuesday he would deepen the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 more troops to fight the Taliban, and called for additional commitments from U.S. allies. He said troops could start returning by July 2011, and stressed that Afghan forces would be rapidly trained to take over the fight.

France already has nearly 4,000 troops in Afghanistan. A report in Monday’s Le Monde newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asked French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner last week if France could send 1,500 additional troops to Afghanistan.

Sarkozy has previously said that no additional French troops would be sent to Afghanistan, but on Wednesday both he and Kouchner left the door open to a possible new French deployment.

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