Moscow  - Georgia is to send 400 troops to Afghanistan to help NATO-led forces in the fight against insurgents loyal to the country's former Taliban rulers, reports said Tuesday.

The troops will be deployed in the volatile south of Afghanistan by year's end, where they will be under French and Dutch command, the news agency Interfax reported, quoting the Georgian Defence Ministry.

A defence ministry spokesman in the former Soviet Republic said Georgia had no immediate plans to withdraw any of its 2,000 troops serving with US-led coalition forces in Iraq.

Georgia is seeking to join NATO, but has been hindered from doing so by the conflicts over its breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. (dpa)