Agence France-Presse . Vilnius

NATO defence ministers were set Friday for a second day of contentious talks on Afghanistan amid calls led by the United States and Britain for more frontline combat troops to fight resurgent Taliban forces.

Ministers stuck to their positions on Thursday during talks burden-sharing in Afghanistan, a sensitive issue that threatens cohesion of the 26-nation transatlantic alliance. NATOs UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has been confronted with an increasingly bloody insurgency campaign by Taliban militants, and commanders have sought more troops and weapons.

The German defence minister, Franz Josef Jung, resisted renewed pressure by the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, to send German troops currently deployed in northern Afghanistan to the restive south.

In my opinion our contribution is excellent, said Jung in Vilnius. We are the third-largest contributor. Germany has 3,200 soldiers, deployed in the relatively peaceful north, compared with 15,000 US and 7,800 British troops.

Jung on Wednesday turned down NATO, US and Canadian requests to deploy German forces in the south, pointing out the limited terms of deployment approved by the German parliament.

The Bundestag voted in October to extend Germanys Afghan mission for a year, but exclusively in the north. Opinion polls suggest that a majority of Germans oppose Bundeswehr troops engaging in combat missions.

The Canadian defence minister, Peter MacKay, confirmed his country could not keep its contingent of 2,500 men in southern Kandahar province after February 2009 without extra support in the form of 1,000 troops, helicopters and drone surveillance aircraft. Canadas parliament decides next month whether to prolong its combat mission in Afghanistan beyond February 2009, a vote that could trigger a snap general election.

For the last year-and-a-half, the United States has urged European allies notably Germany, France, Spain and Italy  to join Britain, The Netherlands and Canada in fighting Taliban insurgents. ISAF forces have grown from 16,000 to 43,000 troops within the space of two years, but commanders have been calling for another 7,500 troops to fight a resurgent Taliban, which has used bases in remote tribal areas of northern Pakistan to regroup.

Ahead of the Vilnius conference, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said he worried about NATO evolving into a two-tiered alliance, in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect peoples security, and others who are not.

And I think that it puts a cloud over the future of the alliance, if this is to endure and perhaps even get worse, he said. The message was reinforced by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan Thursday.

Frankly, I hope that there will be more troop contributions and there need to be more Afghan contributions, Rice said reporters in the former Taliban capital of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. But Gates adopted a pragmatic line on Thursday, suggesting that countries which couldnt dispatch combat troops because of domestic politics send equipment or non-combat troops.

We are realistic about politics here in Europe, Gates told journalists in Vilnius. The governments in Europe get it, they understand the importance of Afghanistan but many of them are in coalitions and just arent able to do certain kinds of things. If somebody cant send combat soldiers in certain areas because of the politics at home then perhaps they could pay for helicopters or provide helicopters, said Gates, in what appeared to be a reference to Germany.

The defence minister of Denmark, Soren Gade, said no country at the Vilnius talks had made any firm troop commitment. The French defence minister, Herve Morin, said he said MacKay on Thursday that we would help the Canadians, but added that a firm decision would only come from the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, at the Bucharest NATO summit in April.

The solution does not depend on only France, and all this must be considered in a global framework... If I have a message for Canadians, it is to be patient, Morin said. NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the two-day informal NATO defence ministers meeting in Vilnius was not meant to see ministers put forces on the table and tell us where they are going. That wasnt the idea.

Comments

Add New

Write comment
Name:
Email:	We don't publish your mail. See privacy policy.
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.