A
first round of talks among NATO defense ministers this week in the Lithuanian
capital of Vilnius
yielded no formal offers of troops.
All
26 NATO nations have soldiers in Afghanistan and all agree the
mission is their top priority. But the refusal of European allies to send more
combat troops is forcing an already stretched U.S. military -- largely focused
on the Iraq war -- to fill the gap, and it is straining the alliance.
Canada
has sought more support for its 2,500 troops stationed in the restive southern
Kandahar province. Defense Minister Peter MacKay said Thursday in Vilnius that Ottawa's
demand that an extra 1,000 NATO troops join Canadian forces was not a matter
for negotiations.
Canada's parliament will vote next month on
whether to prolong its combat mission in Afghanistan beyond February 2009 in
a ballot that could trigger a snap general election.
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.
Germany said it would send around 200 combat
soldiers to northern Afghanistan
as part of a NATO Quick Reaction Force to relieve a Norwegian unit but would
not move troops to the south.
"I
think we are doing our bit fully in Afghanistan," said Defense
Minister Franz Josef Jung, according to Reuters. He noted Germany's 3,000-plus contingent was the third
largest in Afghanistan.
In a
show of unity, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced
trip to Kabul and Kandahar with British Foreign Secretary David
Miliband so they could get a firsthand look at the front lines of the NATO-led
fight as they lead an effort to boost the number of NATO combat forces in the
country.
The
stop in Kandahar was a rare side trip outside the Afghan capital by the top
U.S. and British diplomats to meet with international forces facing a resurgent
Taliban.
Rice
said the brief unannounced visit was not an attempt to show up European nations
that have refused to send fighting troops to Kandahar and other southern
regions.
"It's
just the rationale of being able to get outside of Kabul and see one of the areas that's been
very active," she said.
Afghan
President Hamid Karzai, standing beside Rice at a news conference, also
defended his leadership, saying the economy and education systems have improved
under his watch and there are more democratic freedoms under a new
constitution.
"Afghanistan,
if given more attention, would be very, very glad and thankful but it is not
right that Afghanistan has been forgotten," said Karzai, responding to a
recent independent report, which said the country is in danger of becoming a
failed state.
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."
But
Gates also said he doesn't think the alliance is at a point of risking failure
in the country.
"I
don't think that there's a crisis, that there's a risk of failure," Gates
said during a news conference in Vilnius,
the Associated Press reported. He said, however, that strengthening the
fighting force there would help speed the defeat of the Taliban militants
Gates
noted that despite security setbacks, the country has made gains on the civil
side of things, improving the daily lives of Afghans.
NATO
Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer acknowledged more forces were needed to
combat mounting Taliban and al-Qaida 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.
