NATO’s unity at stake over Afghan mission

VILNIUS/KABUL—NATO struggled to maintain unity over the war in Afghanistan on Thursday after the United States raised concerns that some members were not willing to let their troops “fight and die” to achieve victory. On a visit to troops fighting the Taliban, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice kept up the pressure on reluctant allies to share the combat burden.
A first round of talks among NATO defense ministers in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius yielded no formal offers of troops. However, a government spokesman in Paris said France was considering a possible new deployment. “Frankly, I hope there will be more troop contributions and there needs to be more Afghan forces,” Rice told reporters traveling with her on the flight from London with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates laid bare U.S. concern about NATO on Wednesday when he said the alliance could split into countries that were willing to “fight and die to protect people’s security and those who were not.” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer acknowledged more forces were needed to combat mounting Taliban and al Qaeda violence but dismissed Gates’ fears that NATO could become a “two-tiered alliance” based on a country’s willingness to fight.
“I do not see a two-tier alliance, there is one alliance,” de Hoop Scheffer told reporters as he arrived in Vilnius, where Gates met 25 other NATO defense ministers. He renewed an appeal for countries to reserve requests for reinforcements for closed-door discussions. “Usually we do not do that in public,” he said.
The NATO-led ISAF force has about 43,000 troops in Afghanistan. Canada, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands are involved in most of the fierce fighting in the south, and they want other countries to contribute more in what has become the toughest battle in NATO’s 59-year history.
On Wednesday Germany said it would send around 200 combat soldiers to northern Afghanistan as part of a NATO Quick Reaction Force but would not move troops to the south. “I think we are doing our bit fully in Afghanistan,” Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told reporters. He noted Germany’s 3,000-plus contingent was the third largest in Afghanistan.
In Paris, a spokesman for President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, but did not confirm French media reports that some 700 paratroopers could be deployed to the south. “These are issues that are being examined. To my knowledge no decision has been reached yet,” Sarkozy’s spokesman David Martinon said of possible new deployments.
NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the alliance had not expected firm troop offers to emerge from the Vilnius talks and said all nations understood the need for reinforcements. “There was clearly a sense around the table that there are shortfalls that need to be met, that we need as quickly as possible to meet them,” he told reporters.
Gates said the difference in attitude among allies clouded the future of the alliance. “My view is you can’t have some allies whose sons and daughters die in combat and other allies who are shielded from that kind of a sacrifice,” he told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. —Agencies