Bernard Kouchner said he thought that if Western nations continued to demand cleaner governance, Karzai would deliver.

"People here are among the poorest in the world ... and they're not corrupt. They just don't have enough to eat," Kouchner told The Associated Press in Tora, a French military base in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, some 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of the capital. He visited troops there after attending Karzai's inauguration.

Kouchner said France, which already has more than 3,000 troops in Afghanistan, would not commit more forces, but would continue donating funds, concentrating on small-scale aid because that was the least likely to be embezzled.

He said there was no timeframe for the withdrawal of French forces and that the Obama administration's debate about whether to increase troop levels would not change France's position in the NATO-led effort to quell terrorism and alleviate poverty in the country. "But we'd be happy to see the Americans assert a specific strategy," he said.

Kouchner, who helped found the international aid group Doctors Without Borders and lived in Afghanistan for several years to help Afghans battling a Russian invasion in the 1980s, said Moscow could play a bigger role in international discussions regarding Afghanistan. Better knowledge of the Soviets' experience and eventual withdrawal "could be very useful to our reflection," he said.

While Karzai's government has been increasingly tarred by allegations of corruption, Kouchner said it was promising that the Afghan leader pledged to reform his administration in his inauguration speech, with was attended by some 40 heads of states and foreign ministers, including U.S. State Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"This isn't the only corrupt country. I know many, many developing countries where we ourselves ... have fed corruption," said Kouchner, referring to how a mass influx of foreign aid can sometimes enable large-scale embezzling.

NATO's Afghan partners will try to install stronger monitoring mechanism to make sure Karzai follows through on his pledges to reform and improve his administration, Kouchner said.

"With the new government, we'll try to follow the money's tracks," he said. "But let's not deceive ourselves, it won't change overnight."