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RIGA, (Reuters): The United States called on NATO allies on Monday to do more in Afghanistan, but acknowledged on the eve of an alliance summit that domestic politics held some countries back from a more robust presence there.
The call came as a suicide bomber killed two Canadian soldiers in an attack on a convoy in the south of Afghanistan, underlining the risks in NATO's toughest ground combat to date.
Afghanistan will top the agenda at the summit in the Latvian capital Riga. Countries such as Germany, Spain, Italy and France will come under pressure to allow troops to take part in the worst fighting in the south, something they have resisted.
“If allies have agreed by consensus to take on a mission, then as a matter of solidarity, allies should help each other to carry out the mission,” said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official said that ideally all countries would remove all restrictions, known as “caveats”, on what their troops could do and where they could go, but he added: “Anything that is a move in that direction would be positive. Every country has its own domestic politics and has to sort out what it has to do.”
The 32,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has encountered heavy casualties since British, Canadian and Dutch troops moved in late August into the south of the country, the heartland of the Taliban. More than 150 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year.
CHIRAC PROPOSAL
Germany insists its 2,800 troops concentrated in the calmer north are bound to that area by parliamentary mandate.
NATO officials will also use the summit to appeal for more troops to plug a shortfall of some 2,500 soldiers. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news briefing on Monday he had no news yet of concrete offers.
U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Richard Lugar said NATO's credibility was on the line over the mission, and that the refusal of some allies to remove limits on their troops and provide reinforcements was hobbling the mission.
“If the most prominent alliance in modern history were to fail in its first operation outside of Europe due to lack of will by its members, the efficacy of NATO and the ability to take joint action against a terrorist threat would be called into question,” he told an event on the sidelines of the summit.
Fifteen nations plus non-NATO Sweden went a step towards solving persistent shortages in heavy airlift that plague the alliance by agreeing to buy jointly an initial three C-17 transporters from U.S. Boeing Co.
“The use of such aircraft by NATO will represent a quantum leap in our strategic lift capability,” de Hoop Scheffer said.
Amid concerns that the slow pace of aid to many Afghans is feeding renewed support for the Taliban, France said President Jacques Chirac would ask fellow leaders on Tuesday to set up a “contact group” to reorganise ties with other agencies there.
The group would comprise all the nations contributing forces to ISAF, including non-NATO members like New Zealand, countries in the region and international organisations such as the World Bank and United Nations, a presidential source said.
In an opinion piece to be circulated in several European newspapers on Tuesday, Chirac said there should be a forum for European Union member states to consult within NATO, and they should become less reliant on Washington for defence. (Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau in Paris)
