The French Defence Minister was called on yesterday to give an urgent account to Parliament of the Taleban ambush that led to the deaths of ten soldiers in Afghanistan. As the Socialist Party reacted with anger to The Times report, the ministry said that it had long been aware of rumours that linked Italian bribery to the ambush in Sarobi, east of Kabul, in August 2008. The reports had no basis, it said.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Socialists’ parliamentary leader, told Hervé Morin, the Defence Minister, that the denial was not enough. “This is very serious, if it is true, and I ask the minister to come in the immediate future before the Defence Committee to explain and tell us what information he has,” Mr Ayrault said.

“If operations of this type are being used to administer certain areas . . . distributing money to the Taleban creates a general problem for the co-ordination of military operations.”

Socialist MPs, who voted this year against keeping the 2,900-strong French contingent in Afghanistan, said that the reports appeared to reflect the failure of the Nato operation.

President Sarkozy said yesterday that he would not be authorising extra troops for Afghanistan and wanted the Afghan Army to take over security. “My conviction is that there must be more Afghan soldiers. They will be the most effective in winning this war because it is their country. But we need to pay them more to avoid desertions that benefit the Taleban,” he said. “Do we need to stay in Afghanistan? I say yes. And stay to win. Not against Afghanistan, but for Afghanistan.”

Mr Sarkozy told the newspaper Le Figaro: “If we leave, Pakistan, a nuclear power, will be threatened. But France will not send one more soldier.”

The military dismissed talk of bribery, but a senior Afghan army officer in Kabul told Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, that all forces in the Nato operation except the British and Americans paid the insurgents. “We knew that Italian forces were paying the opposition [fighters] in Sarobi so they would not be attacked. We have information on similar agreements made in the western Herat province by Italian soldiers under Nato command there,” the army officer said on condition of anonymity.

Relatives of the soldiers killed in the Sarobi ambush voiced outrage over what they considered to be shoddy command in Afghanistan. Joel Le Pahun, the father of one of the soldiers, said: “This just makes the pain even worse. It reopens a wound that has yet to heal. We want the French officers responsible for what happened to be punished.

“If it turns out to be true the Italians did this, it would not do honour to their army or their Government. On top of that, the fact they failed to tell the French forces about it is truly catastrophic.”

The French Defence Ministry played down The Times report. “We have no element to confirm these rumours which have been circulating since August 19, 2008,” said RearAdmiral Christophe Prazuck, the chief spokesman for the armed forces.

“The command organisation in the region, the permanent exchange of information between Italian, Turkish and French troops, enables us to say that what has come out in the British press is without foundation,” he said. “We had access to all the information the Italians had on what they were doing in Sarobi.”

He added that it was not French practice to pay the Taleban.

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