US, Britain Urge NATO Allies to Boost Afghan Military Presence
By VOA News
06 February 2008
The United States and Britain are calling on other NATO countries to send more soldiers to Afghanistan to fight the ongoing Taliban insurgency.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in London Wednesday for talks with British leaders, said only a small number of NATO countries have troops in the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.
U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch troops have shouldered most of the NATO burden in fighting the Taliban in the most perilous southern regions of Afghanistan.
Rice met today with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Lithuania later this week.
Earlier today, she called the NATO mission in Afghanistan a "bumpy" and difficult counter-insurgency task for traditionally-trained militaries.
Canada has threatened to pull its troops out of Afghanistan next year unless other allies send reinforcements.
Last week, Germany spurned a call by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to send forces to the south. German officials say their country's troop presence is restricted by parliamentary mandate to northern areas of Afghanistan. But German officials today said they will send 200 additional troops to the north.
A recent report by a panel led by a former NATO commander, U.S. General James Jones, warned that Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a "failed state" because of insufficient few military forces and inadequate economic aid.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
