Middle East Aggregator

The U.S. general who led American troops into Iraq took command Tuesday of the 40-nation NATO-led campaign in Afghanistan.

Army Gen. David D. McKiernan took charge of the 51,000-member International Security Assistance Force from Gen. Dan McNeill, who will retire from the U.S. Army after 40 years.

Addressing a change of command ceremony Tuesday, McKiernan said he was "honored to walk alongside our Afghan brothers."

"While today marks a transition in commanders, the mission must continue without missing a beat," he said, listing security, reconstruction and development as the types of support that Afghanistan deserves. "Insurgents, foreign fighters, criminals and others who stand in the way of that mission will be dealt with."

In the latest violence, three ISAF soldiers were killed in attacks, including two in eastern Afghanistan, where most of the forces are American. About 15 others - insurgents and Afghan police - also died in violence. (AP)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban, U.S.

NATO's commander in Afghanistan urged the government on Thursday to step up its fight against the opium trade, which is increasingly fuelling the insurgency.

"The Afghan government must stand up and say, 'Much of our country is defined by the illegal narcotics business and we are no longer going to stand for it'," U.S. General Dan McNeill said.

"The Afghans must, in my view, prosecute their strategy better," he told reporters in a news conference broadcast to NATO headquarters in Brussels.

McNeill said it was no coincidence the bulk of the Afghan opium trade was in the south where NATO troops are facing the worst violence.

"In portions of those five (southern) provinces, the insurgency is illegal narcotics, and illegal narcotics is the insurgency," said McNeill, who will hand over command of the NATO-led force in June after 16 months in charge.

Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's opium production and there was a record harvest in 2007. (Reuters)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

A suicide car bomber struck a NATO convoy near an alliance base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Sunday, killing one local civilian, witnesses and a police officer said.

Three NATO soldiers were wounded in the blast, a spokesman for the force said.

NATO soldiers cordoned off the site of the attack which happened near the house of the ousted Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. It was being used as a base for the alliance.

Minutes after the attack, explosives attached to a bicycle went off in another part of the city, but caused no casualties.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan since 2006, the bloodiest period since the Taliban's removal from power in 2001. More than 12,000 people have been killed during this period. (Reuters)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

A Lithuanian soldier and two Afghan civilians have been killed in a shooting incident at a protest over a US soldier's shooting of a Quran in Iraq, officials say.

The shooting on Thursday began when about 2,000 demonstrators armed with sticks tried to storm a Lithuanian-commanded Nato base in Chaghcharan, in Ghor province, police said.

Police blamed the gunfire on fighters but a local legislator said the shots were fired by security forces.

Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said the locals were killed by police.

One Isaf soldier was killed and another wounded, General Carlos Branco, an Isaf spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

Lithuania's defence ministry confirmed that the soldier was one of about 260 Lithuanian troops in Isaf.

The soldier is the first member of the Lithuanian force to be killed in Afghanistan, the ministry said without giving further details. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

The Netherlands and Britain are to increase the length of their command rotations in southern Afghanistan from nine months to 12 months, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

The commitment by the two Nato-member countries to lengthen their tours comes after concerns that short stints are hampering military operations against the Taliban.

The agreement will take effect when Canada hands over command of the south to the Netherlands in November, Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said.

He said the deal sets the command rotations through 2010, when the US assumes command in the south.

"We believe that this new arrangement - and our allies as well, because they have agreed to it - will provide greater predictability, continuity, stability in this volatile important region of Afghanistan," Morrell said. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Netherlands, U.K.

The Afghan government will decide when foreign troops will leave the country, the foreign minister said on Tuesday, but added they would be needed until Afghan security forces could stand on their own feet.

"Whenever ... the Afghan security forces and its national army acquire the ability to defend this water and soil against international terrorism and foreign interventions, there will be no need for the presence of international military forces in Afghanistan," Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told a news conference.

"And the government of Afghanistan itself will specify as to when and who needs to be (here) or go," Spanta replied when asked by a reporter whether the government had set any time frame for the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country.

Currently some 60,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military are stationed in Afghanistan where the al Qaeda-backed Taliban movement has made a comeback since 2006.

And the number of Western-trained and funded Afghan security forces fighting against the militants stands at nearly 150,000. (Reuters)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

Taliban fighters have fired a rocket hitting a Nato helicopter in which the governor of a key southern Afghan province was travelling, officials said.

They said no one was injured, but a series of clashes, air attacks and bomb blasts elsewhere in the country killed 10 fighters and four civilians on Saturday.

Ghulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand, and a delegation of British officials were about to land in the provincial town of Musa Qala when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the CH-47 Chinook helicopter, Mangal told the Associated Press.

The grenade "hit the tail end" of the chopper, said Major Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force.

"There was a minor damage to shaft and the rear blade," O'Donnell said.

"The helicopter landed under control" at a nearby Nato base. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban

International and Afghan troops forged ahead with an offensive against the Taliban near the Pakistan border on Tuesday, with a governor insisting 150 rebels had been killed in the past week. US Marines and British troops under NATO command launched a significant new operation two weeks ago in Garmser district in southern Helmand Province, a key battleground for a Taliban-led insurgency and an opium-producing center. Soldiers in a separate US-led coalition have also reported several engagements in the area in the past week. They said Tuesday they had killed a dozen rebels in Garmser on Monday.

The international forces helping Afghanistan fight an insurgency led by the Al-Qaeda-backed Taliban normally do not issue death tolls. But Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal said Tuesday that 150 rebels, most of whom he said were Al-Qaeda-linked Arab and Pakistani fighters, had been killed in Garmser in the past week.

"In the past seven, eight days, we have killed about 150 insurgents, most of them foreign fighters," he said, citing "intelligence." 

"We have intelligence reports that more than 500 enemy fighters, most of them foreign terrorists, are in the district," he said. "The operation will continue until the district is cleared of these destructive elements."  (AFP)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban, U.S.

Germany's highest court ruled Wednesday that the decision to deploy German crews on NATO surveillance flights over Turkey during the Iraq war was illegal. The Federal Constitutional Court based in this southwestern city said the center-left government of then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had violated the country's Basic Law by supplying pilots without consulting Parliament. The ruling upheld a five-year-old complaint by the liberal opposition Free Democrats, who had tried and failed to stop the deployment in March 2003. NATO dispatched AWACS surveillance aircraft to Turkey as part of an agreement to protect the country, a member of the alliance, against any attack by Iraq during the US-led invasion. Berlin allowed German pilots to man some of the aircraft without putting the issue to a vote in the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament. The government at the time, comprised of Social Democrats and Greens, fiercely opposed the war on Iraq and refused to take any part, but critics said the crews' flights on the AWACS were tantamount to joining the conflict. The court said Wednesday that Parliament must have a say in such decisions if it is likely that German soldiers will be drawn into combat as part of a mission. (AFP)

Labels: Germany, Iraq, NATO

Iran accused NATO on Wednesday of being indifferent towards Afghanistan's growing drugs problem and called on European states to help Tehran fight smuggling of heroin and other narcotics from its neighbor.

Iran is on a heroin smuggling route to the West from the opium fields of Afghanistan, the world's number one producer of the opium poppy, which is processed to make heroin.

"The exploding growth in the cultivation of opium ... in Afghanistan last year has created many problems ... especially for Iran," said Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, secretary of Iran's drug control headquarters.

Iranian officials say the United States, its old foe, has failed to combat drugs in Afghanistan after U.S.-led forces ousted the Islamist Taliban government in 2001.

"We think NATO and foreign forces in Afghanistan are indifferent to the issue of drugs and have put other goals as their priorities," Ahmadi Moghaddam told a conference.

The alliance has about 50,000 troops in Afghanistan. (Reuters)

Labels: Drugs, Iran, NATO

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, is considering sending 7,000 American troops to Afghanistan early next year, the New York Times newspaper has reported.

The number of US troops in Afghanistan would rise to about 40,000 if the plan is approved.

The move would also entail a "modest reduction" in troops from Iraq, the newspaper said.

The report comes after George Bush, the US president, announced at a Nato summit last month that the US would significantly increase troop levels in Afghanistan next year.

Gates has also pushed other European member states to provide combat troops and equipment to fill shortfalls in the south of Afghanistan.

Southern Afghanistan is considered to be the most dangerous area of the country, but the response to Gates's appeal has so far been tepid.

The New York Times said the Pentagon now appears resigned to the fact that Nato is unable or unwilling to contribute more troops despite its public pledges. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, U.S.

The Taliban have suffered their first major loss in this year's offensive, but they are putting on a brave face, even spinning the setback as a triumph in their broader battle against foreign forces in Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, several thousand US Marines captured the town of Garmsir in the southern Afghan province of Helmand in their first large operation since arriving to reinforce North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops last month.
The Taliban-controlled Garmsir had served as a main supply route for their insurgency in the area.
The Taliban, however, claim the loss of one base is not critical, and anyway, for NATO to hold on to its gain it will have to commit thousands of troops to the outpost, which is located in the inhospitable desert, if it is to effectively guard the lawless and porous border through which the Taliban funnel men, arms and supplies.
The Taliban also claim that one of their underlying goals since the US-led invasion in 2001 has been to tie down as many foreign troops as possible, much as the mujahideen wore down Soviet troops in the 1980s. Various Taliban leaders have told the media they will not resist the forces in Garmsir, one of the biggest concentrations since the 2001 assault on the country. (Asia Times)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban

In what has been described as "a good public relations exercise", Prince William, second in line to the British throne, has visited Afghanistan to meet British troops in Kandahar province.
The brief unannounced trip is indeed headline-grabbing, but it cannot disguise the fact that the Western coalition has a monumental battle on its hands against the Taliban-led insurgency, and the first round has already begun.
Surprise Taliban attacks from the northern Afghan province of Kapisa (the Tagab Valley) to the southern Helmand districts and from Kunar to Nangarhar provinces have conclusively engaged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in its biggest

operations since the deployment of its forces in Afghanistan in 2001.
In a telling development, several hundred US Marines this week engaged the Taliban in Helmand province near Garmser, the farthest south American troops have operated in that province.
The Taliban rule the countryside here all the way to the Pakistan border. The assault on Garmser was the first offensive by the 2,300 marines who arrived from the United States this month to bolster mainly British forces in the area.

This trend of deploying additional troops in direct confrontations is expected to continue, even at the risk of higher casualties, in provinces such as Nangarhar, Ghazni, Kunar, Helmand and Kandahar, where the Taliban have established strongholds.
This follows a recent NATO summit at which the member countries agreed to reconcile their differences over Afghanistan and commit more troops, especially to the south, where previously many NATO members were not prepared to send troops. (Asia Times)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban

A suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan has killed 15 Afghans and wounded 25 more, the Nato-led military force has said.

The Taliban said it carried out Tuesday's attack near the district centre of Khogyani in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Afghan and foreign troops also called in airstrikes as they battled armed groups in a series of clashes that left at least 23 fighters dead and 20 others wounded, officials said on Tuesday.

The clashes happened in eastern and southern Afghanistan, where Taliban and other groups are waging an insurgency against government and foreign forces.

The joint forces clashed with fighters in the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province on Monday, leaving six Taliban dead and eight others wounded, Zia Wali, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said.

There were no casualties among the Afghan and foreign forces, Wali said. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban

U.S. Marines are crossing the sands of southern Afghanistan for the first time in years, providing a boost to a NATO coalition that is growing but still short on manpower.

They hope to retake the 10 percent of Afghanistan the Taliban holds.

Some of the Marines that make up the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit helped to tame a thriving insurgency in western Iraq. The newly arrived forces hope to move into regions of Afghanistan now controlled by the Taliban.

The troops are working alongside British forces in Helmand province - the world's largest opium-poppy region and site of the fiercest Taliban resistance over the last two years. The director of U.S. intelligence has said the Taliban controls 10 percent of Afghanistan - much of that in Helmand.

"Our mission is to come here and essentially set the conditions, make Afghanistan a better place, provide some security, allow for the expansion of governance in those same areas," said Col. Peter Petronzio, the unit's commander. (AP)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, U.S.

The Afghan president has urged US forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban members, saying the arrests and past mistreatment discourage fighters from surrendering.

Hamid Karzai, in an interview to the New York Times on Saturday, criticised the conduct of US and British force in Afghanistan and said the real Taliban threat was in Pakistan.

He said the real threat was in Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds in Pakistan and argued civilian casualties needed to stop completely.

He also argued that the US-led forces in Afghanistan needed to create a trained police force and said his government should be given the lead in policy decisions.

"For the success of the world in Afghanistan, it would be better to recognise this inherent character in Afghanistan and work with it and support it," newspaper quoted him as saying in the interview. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban, U.S.

NATO's secretary-general told Gulf Arab states on Thursday that Iran's nuclear ambitions were a major threat to regional stability.

"Iran's pursuit of uranium enrichment capability in violation of its U.N. Security Council obligations is a serious concern not just for Iran's neighbors but for the entire international community," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a conference to promote ties between NATO and Gulf Arab states.

Iran says its nuclear program is aimed solely at producing electricity but the West accuses it of trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies. Gulf Arab states have also voiced concern over Iran's nuclear plans.

"We in the Gulf think Iran has the right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but we fear Iran's intentions. We (the Gulf states) speak the same language on Iran," Bahraini politician Sheikh Khaled Khalifa al Khalifa told Reuters.

NATO, a 26-nation security and defense alliance of North American and European countries, has sought to bolster ties with Gulf Arab states. Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have agreed to explore cooperation opportunities.

At the conference, Bahrain signed an agreement with NATO on the exchange of security information. (Reuters)

Labels: Bahrain, GCC, Iran, NATO

Nato forces mistakenly supplied food, water and arms to Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, officials today admitted.

Containers destined for local police forces were dropped from a helicopter into a Taliban-controlled area of Zabul province.

The coalition helicopter had intended to deliver pallets of supplies to a police checkpoint in Ghazni, a remote section of Zabul late last month.

By mistake they were dropped some distance from the checkpoint where it was taken by the Taliban, the Internal Security Affairs Commission of the Wolesi Jirga — the Afghan parliament's lower house — was told.

Hamidullah Tukhi, a local politician from Zabul, told the parliamentary commission that the consignment had been taken by a local Taliban commander.

A Nato spokesman said the pallets were carrying rocket propelled grenades, ammunition, water and food.

Afghan politicians have said they do not believe the drop was an accident. (Guardian)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban

Russia has agreed to allow Nato to use Russian land to deliver non-lethal supplies to alliance troops in Afghanistan, but not troops or air transit arrangements as initially sought by the military alliance.

The deal was announced at a summit between the alliance leaders during which they held talks with Vladimir Putin, Russia's president.

Moscow has been irked by the alliance's eastward expansion and Friday's announcement followed a promise by Nato on Thursday to delay the eventual membership of Ukraine and Georgia until talks in December.

Letters implementing the transit agreement were exchanged between Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's secretary-general, and Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister.

A Nato spokeswoman said: "It's been done. It will cover land transit of non-lethal equipment. Air transit is not for today." (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Russia

President Nicolas Sarkozy brought relief to a troubled Nato summit by announcing he is sending a force of almost 1,000 French troops to join alliance forces in Afghanistan in the battle against the Taliban.

The announcement provided a welcome boost for President George Bush, who also won the full backing of Nato leaders for US plans to locate a missile defence system in eastern Europe, a scheme expected to be criticised by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, when he addresses the summit today. It also sets the scene for a difficult summit between Mr Putin and Mr Bush in Sochi on Sunday. (Independent)

Labels: Afghanistan, France, NATO

George Bush, the US president, has called for Nato members to step up troop contributions in Afghanistan, citing Osama bin Laden's latest threats to Europe.

He says that if the alliance does not stay on the offensive in Afghanistan, Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters will use it to launch more attacks on the West like those on September 11, 2001.

Speaking at a German Marshall Fund conference in Bucharest, Romania, on Wednesday in advance of a summit of Nato leaders, Bush called for more Nato allies to supply troops to the Afghanistan mission.

"The alliance must maintain its resolve and finish the fight ... we cannot afford to loose Afghanistan," he said.

"To ensure that we do win, France is sending additional forces to Afghanistan, the United States is deploying an additional 3,500 marines. Romania is adding forces, as are several other allies.

"We ask other Nato nations to step forward with additional forces." (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

NATO leaders are likely to commit more troops this week to help fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan but the force will still fall short of what commanders want, the U.S. defense secretary said on Tuesday.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Paris might agree to send "a few hundred" more troops to bolster the 47,000-strong NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Leaders of the 26-member alliance meet in the Romanian capital Bucharest this week with the mission high on their agenda amid concern about rising violence, particularly in southern Afghanistan.

Robert Gates said the force's commander wanted an extra three brigades for the mission, but acknowledged that it would take longer to send extra troops. (Reuters)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, U.S.

Insurgents attacked a NATO patrol in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier and wounding another, the alliance said Thursday.

A NATO statement said the NATO soldiers were patrolling when they were hit in a "direct fire attack" Wednesday in volatile Helmand province. The nationalities of the victims have not been released. Most troops in Helmand are British, though U.S. forces and others also operate there. (AP)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has pledged to bolster his country's troop numbers in Afghanistan on the first day of a state visit to Britain.

In a speech to the Houses of Parliament he emphasised the shared history that he said bound the two countries and said that he would confirm the deployment at a Nato summit next week in Bucharest.

Sarkozy said: "France will propose, at the Bucharest summit, to strengthen its military presence."

He did not specify a number, and said the deployment would depend on Nato guarantees that Afghans would be given more responsibility and that non-military efforts would be better co-ordinated.

France currently has 1,500 troops in Afghanistan, mostly in the capital, Kabul, and its northern suburbs. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Afghanistan, France, NATO

Afghan and NATO-led forces killed or wounded scores of Taliban insurgents in a joint air and ground operation in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan Defence Ministry said on Sunday.

The ministry did not give an exact number of militants killed in the latest clash near the town of Deh Rawood in the province of Uruzgan on Saturday, but Afghan security sources said nearly 50 Taliban fighters had died.

"The bodies of the militants are on the grounds and Mullah Hashim, a well-known commander of the group, was among those killed," the Defence Ministry said in a statement.

NATO forces in Uruzgan are under the command of Dutch troops. (Reuters)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban

Hundreds of demonstrators from member countries of NATO laid siege to the alliance's headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels Saturday to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.

Belgian police said they had briefly detained about 450 demonstrators in and around the headquarters located in the suburb of Evere.

Demonstrators were removed from the premises, identified and later released, Belga news agency quoted police as saying.

Minor damage was reported near the NATO building, police said but added that no charges had been filed.

"The police force was huge and they didn't hesitate to use dogs, horses, pepper spray, clubs and water cannon," Belga quoted one demonstrator as saying.

Belgian television showed police using powerful water jets to dislodge people trying to scale the high fencing around the NATO buildings. (Link)

Labels: European Union, Free Speech, Iraq, NATO

An air strike by foreign forces has killed more than 30 people, including civilians, in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, two members of parliament from the area said on Tuesday.

But the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said reports of civilian casualties in the airstrike were wrong. It was not possible to independently verify the conflicting reports due to poor security in the area.

Civilian deaths are a sensitive issue for foreign forces in Afghanistan under the command of the U.S. military and NATO and for President Hamid Karzai's government. (Link)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

Canada's parliament has voted to extend its 2,500-strong troop deployment in volatile southern Afghanistan to 2011, as long as Nato allies back them up.

Lawmakers voted 198 to 77 to keep Canadian battalions in Kandahar for another three years, provided Nato sends 1,000 reinforcements, drones and helicopters to bolster Canada's force now on the ground, as requested.

Otherwise, Canada will withdraw next year at the end of its current mandate.

The outcome of the vote was closely watched by Nato countries, concerned that if Canada rejected an extension of its military mission, an allied exodus of Afghanistan could follow. (Link)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

The United States is reviewing the feasibility of deploying a NATO force in the West Bank as a way to ease IDF security concerns and facilitate an Israeli withdrawal from the area within the coming years, defense officials have told The Jerusalem Post.

The plan, which is being spearheaded by US Special Envoy to the region Gen. James Jones, is being floated among European countries, which could be asked to contribute troops to a West Bank multinational force.

Jones, a former commander of NATO, was sent to Israel in November to help the Israelis and Palestinians frame some of the security mechanics necessary for a broader peace agreement.

As first reported in the Post last month, Jones's plan calls for stationing third-party troops in the West Bank to secure the area in the interim period following an Israeli withdrawal and before the Palestinian Authority can take over full security control. (Link)

Labels: Israel, NATO, Palestine

President Hamid Karzai is under the influence of foreign powers and troops led by NATO and the U.S. must set a firm date for their departure from Afghanistan, a government-run daily newspaper said on Saturday.

The remarks are the first of their kind in an Afghan paper about Karzai and foreign troops in Afghanistan, where there is frustration over growing insecurity and rampant corruption.

"...It should be said that the Afghan nation reacts seriously, despite its difficulties, when the national interests of their country are exposed to foreign danger and have never accepted and nor will accept a protege government," Anis said. (Link)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, U.S.

NATO is in disarray and the West faces defeat in Afghanistan unless it overhauls its counter-insurgency and reconstruction strategy, Britain's Paddy Ashdown wrote in an article published on Wednesday.

Ashdown, who was rejected last month by Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the post of senior U.N. envoy to the country, called in the Financial Times for renewed efforts to win Taliban moderates away from the insurgency.

"With fighting in Afghanistan now entering its seventh year, no agreed international strategy, public support on both sides of the Atlantic crumbling, NATO in disarray and widening insecurity in Afghanistan, defeat is now a real possibility...

"We have not lost in Afghanistan ... But we will lose if we do not start doing things differently," he warned.

Ashdown said the consequences of failure in Afghanistan would be appalling.

"Global terrorism would have won back its old haven and created a new one over the border in a mortally weakened Pakistan," he said. (Link)

Labels: Afghanistan, NATO

The US administration warned yesterday that Nato could be destroyed if European allied troops were not prepared to fight and die in Afghanistan and argued that, unlike the Americans, Europeans were failing to grasp how much was at stake for western security in Afghanistan. The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, also pointed to the dangers of a western alliance divided between US forces who do the fighting and Europeans who follow later to conduct the civilian clean-up operations.

Following weeks of recrimination between Washington and European capitals, particularly Berlin, over troop contributions and fighting capacity in Nato's troubled Afghan mission, Gates told a conference of defence policy-makers and security experts in Munich that Nato's future was on the line in the war against the Taliban in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

"Some allies ought not to have the luxury of opting only for stability and civilian operations, thus forcing other allies to bear a disproportionate share of the fighting and dying," said Gates. (Link)

Labels: NATO

Robert Gates warned that the future of Nato was at risk if it became a "two-tiered alliance" of countries which fought, and those that did not.

Mr Gates was speaking on the last day of a security conference in Munich.

The summit is also set to consider a threatened diplomatic crisis with Russia over Kosovan independence plans.

Mr Gates said it was incumbent upon Nato leaders to "recapitulate to the people of Europe the importance of the Afghanistan mission and its relationship to the wider terrorist threat".

"On a conceptual level, I believe it falls squarely within the traditional bounds of the alliance's core purpose: to defend the security interests and values of the trans-Atlantic community," he told the gathering of the world's top defence officials. (Link)

Labels: European Union, NATO, U.S.