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NATO leaders committed to allowing their troops to be used in emergencies in Afghanistan with many agreeing to relax restrictions that have hampered operations, officials said.
But they failed to find all the extra troops and equipment needed in southern Afghanistan to fight a tenacious Taliban-led insurgency there.
At a meeting opening their summit in Latvia, the leaders sent a “strong message of determination and solidarity while stressing that this is NATO's number one priority,” a NATO official said, on condition that he not be named.
He said they made a “clear commitment to the long term for this operation”, during a working dinner that lasted just over two hours and focused uniquely on NATO's troubled and most ambitious mission ever.
NATO is leading some 32,000 troops from 37 nations under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has been trying since 2003 to spread the influence of President Hamid Karzai's weak central government.
But its operation has been hampered by a lack of equipment and a reluctance to provide reinforcements to stave off the insurgency, which has claimed some 3,700 lives this year, four times more than last year.
Contributors have also imposed strict conditions on the use of their forces, known in NATO parlance as caveats, which have frustrated commanders on the ground when they need to move troops quickly to an area of tensions.
The official said that NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had received confirmation “clearly with all 26 that in emergency situations they will all come to the support of each other.”
He did not say what kind of problem would constitute an emergency but said that “the threshold has to rest with the force commander” on what one might be.
He said the leaders “are going to put their forces at his disposal.”
NATO's military commander, US General James Jones, also said that he had received answers from NATO nations on what their current caveats were, and that a number had now been lifted.
“Based on that we have made substantial progress and … now 26,000 out of the 32,000 troops in the country are more usable than they were earlier,” Jones said, according to the official.
But Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said Italy, which has around 1,800 soldiers in the west of the country, had made no new pledges or concessions.
“Our position remains absolutely unchanged, like those of France, Spain and Germany, it is a firm decision to stay with the scenario we were already in,” he told reporters after the dinner talks.
“There were no promises or commitments” on allowing the troops to move out of their current area, he said.
When asked whether the problem finding the estimated 2,500 troops needed in southern Afghanistan had been resolved, the official said: “It's not.”
“There is still a significant number of, for example, air assets, and all the crews that go with them that remain unfilled,” he said, adding that helicopters and transport planes were still needed.
A commitment to provide fighter aircraft was given, he said.
On troops themselves, the official said: “A few nations committed to providing more forces in Afghanistan” but he declined to name them.
However a French diplomat and a second source said that no country made a firm commitment at the meeting to send additional troops.
At the dinner French President Jacques Chirac proposed a “contact group” — similar to the ones created for Bosnia and Kosovo — to oversee reconstruction and development, the French diplomat said.
The NATO official said the idea had won support and that Scheffer “will take the lead in taking forward the definition of that contact group, how it will work and what composition it will have.”
At the dinner the leaders were alone with each other except for one advisor, and with just one more session on Wednesday morning — devoted to NATO's longer term aims and enlargement and not Afghanistan — time was in short supply.
To focus minds, news came that two NATO soldiers and an Afghan policeman had been killed in a battery of attacks Tuesday.
