World Story

DEH HASSAN, Afghanistan (AP) — The girl flashed a shy smile from under her white head scarf and stepped to the front of the class when the headmaster asked who could find Afghanistan on the map of the world.

After a little hesitation, 11-year-old Pashtun pointed to her homeland, making a successful start to her first day at school.

Pashtun — a common first name in ethnic Pashtun areas — and her classmates are the face of Afghanistan that NATO wants the world to see. It’s a stark contrast to the surge in violence that made last year the bloodiest since the U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban in late 2001.

German and Scandinavian troops provided security and German aid workers supplied the funds to build the new yellow-and-white schoolhouse for 600 girls from Deh Hassan and nearby villages.

Development projects like this school complement NATO’s combat and security operations in Afghanistan, an attempt to win the hearts and minds of Afghans and show them that the alliance is committed to helping the government. Under the Taliban regime, it was a crime to teach females.

Der Hassan, a village of camel herders and almond farmers, sits in a strip of desert separating the mountains of central Afghanistan from the northern border with Uzbekistan.

NATO troops are welcome in this region far from the southern battlefields.

”It’s all calm and serene here,” says district Governor Alhaj Sayed Abrar. ”Each step NATO takes for the reconstruction of the country is positive.”

Over a lunch of palao rice, lamb and the famed local pomegranates, Abrar heaped praise on the German troops and development officials. He blamed the continued violence on foreign militants mainly from Pakistan who exploit the Islamic conservatism of Afghan southerners to whip up extremism.

However, just 75 miles east of Deh Hassan, German army commanders in the city of Kunduz say their previously calm sector has seen a spate of attacks since last summer. The German government has reinforced the mission by sending in paratroopers

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PARIS — Dedicating France’s fourth nuclear-armed submarine on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy defended France’s nuclear weaponry as vital to deter a range of new threats, including the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran with intercontinental missiles.

“The security of Europe is at stake,” he said, conflating the continent’s interests with those of France.

“Countries in Asia and the Middle East are rapidly developing ballistic capacities,” he said. “I am thinking in particular of Iran,” which is “increasing the range of its missiles while serious suspicions weigh on its nuclear program.”

Mr. Sarkozy, stung by defeats in local elections in some large French cities, stuck to traditional presidential themes of national security and defense. His sudden divorce and remarriage, and his tendency to flit from one scheme to another, have made him seem slightly unserious, contributing to his party’s losses.

His mood on Friday was somber, as he inaugurated a new generation of nuclear submarine of the “Triomphant” class, this one named Le Terrible, which could be best translated as The Fearsome.’ It will be equipped with a new, nuclear-tipped missile, the M-51, whose range is secret but which is understood, according to Le Monde, to be some 4970 miles, able to reach Asia.

Clearly trying to balance nuclear modernization with gestures toward a European population more interesting in eliminating nuclear weapons than improving them, Mr. Sarkozy said that France would continue to reduce the number of warheads on airplanes, bringing its total nuclear force to fewer than 300 warheads, half the number during the Cold War.          

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