Paris -- Afghanistan's president is corrupt, British conservatives are pathetic, NATO can't get its war plan in order and German troops won't fight -- France's top diplomats are in undiplomatic mood.

French was once known as the language of diplomacy, but Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and European Affairs Minister Pierre Lellouche left normal niceties aside in a series of frank attacks on allies.

"Karzai is corrupt, OK, but he's our guy," Kouchner told selected foreign correspondents over lunch on Wednesday, just days before he is due to fly to Kabul to attend President Hamid Karzai's inauguration, according to the New York Times.

Not content with skewering the man whose cooperation he himself insists is key to reviving Western hopes of a stable Afghanistan, Kouchner went on to berate France's NATO allies, especially Germany.

According to the Financial Times, Kouchner said Europe had failed to agree on a joint Afghan plan because German soldiers "are not there to fight.”

Meanwhile, Washington is drawing up Afghan strategy without seeking European input and the NATO allies are wandering into the unknown.

"What is the goal? What is the road? And in the name of what? Where are the Americans? It begins to be a problem ... We need to talk to each other as allies," 70-year-old Kouchner declared, according to the New York Times.

And it's not just Afghan policy that has raised hackles in the elegant staterooms of the ministry's Quai d'Orsay headquarters, at least to judge by Lellouche's frank assessment of Britain's opposition Conservative Party.

The Tories are theoretically natural allies of France's centre-right government and are widely expected to form Britain's next government from May next year, when William Hague could become Kouchner's opposite number.

Lellouche's opinion of his recent meetings with Hague? "A waste of time for all of us," he said, according to an interview published in The Guardian.

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