PARIS: The world must accept the results of Afghanistan's elections in August even if hard-line Taliban militants win, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in an interview Monday.

‘We must respect the result of the elections whatever it is,’ he told Le Figaro daily.

‘If the nationalist Taliban come to power through the vote and accept the constitution that is the Afghans' business.’

‘What we cannot accept is support for international jihad,’ Kouchner added.

The French minister added that ‘there is no question of making (Afghanistan) a Western-style democracy.’

Afghanistan's electoral authorities have delayed what will be only the country's second presidential elections from April to August because of logistical and security problems in the war-ravaged nation.

Nearly seven years after they were ousted from government, the Taliban are still actively waging an insurgency aimed at toppling the Western-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai.

There is a 70,000-strong international force in Afghanistan trying to defeat the insurgency. The United States, Kabul's main backer, has said it will deploy 17,000 additional troops in the summer.