About time to reconsider the utillity of NATO along with the UN. B http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080207/ts_nm/afghan_nato_dc_1;_ylt=Ank.nXhrr.uR AKSUZGE8BmbOVooA
NATO chief rejects U.S. concern over Afghan combat By Patrick Lannin and Sue Pleming Thu Feb 7, 6:57 AM ET VILNIUS/KABUL (Reuters) - NATO's top official rejected on Thursday U.S. concern that some member countries were not pulling their weight in the fighting in Afghanistan. On a visit to troops in Afghanistan with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice kept up the pressure on reluctant allies to share the combat burden against the Taliban. "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. 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 said he believed more forces were needed in Afghanistan where attacks by Taliban and al Qaeda fighters have soared in the past two years. But he rejected fears expressed by Gates that NATO could develop into 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 and 25 other NATO defense ministers were due to meet. 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. 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. "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," Gates told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. CLOUD OVER ALLIANCE He said the difference in attitude put a cloud over the future of the alliance. Rice said alliance members needed to "come together to give enough military power to do what needs to be done on the front end of the counter-insurgency effort." After flying into the Afghan capital Kabul, Rice and Miliband traveled in a U.S. military plane to a sprawling base in the southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and the main city in Afghanistan's most volatile region. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament on Wednesday he wanted NATO allies at a summit in Bucharest in April to commit to a fair sharing of the task. "We have 15 percent of the troops in Afghanistan ... We need a proper burden sharing not only in terms of personnel but also in terms of helicopters and other equipment," he said. Canada's minority government plans a parliamentary vote of confidence late next month on prolonging its military mission in Afghanistan, officials said on Wednesday. The country's three opposition parties -- which between them control parliament -- reject the idea of an extension. "We want to see more of a one-for-all approach, including more burden-sharing in south," Canadian defense Minister Peter MacKay told reporters in Vilnius, reaffirming a demand for reinforcements to help its 2,500 troops in Kandahar province. (Writing by Robert Woodward; editing by Elizabeth Piper) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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