Gates pressures Nato allies over Afghanistan
US defence secretary Robert Gates is expected to crank up pressure on European allies who refuse to send troops to the front line against the resurgent Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
Despite appeals by Nato’s top diplomat to tone down public disagreements over the Afghan conflict, Mr Gates yesterday stepped up his criticism of allies resisting US appeals for more combat troops to take on the Taliban in their southern heartlands.
“I worry a great deal about the alliance 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,” Mr Gates told a Senate hearing in Washington.
He said he would continue to be “a nag on this issue” when he met his Nato counterparts today and tomorrow in Vilnius, Lithuania.
All 26 Nato nations have troops in Afghanistan. They have expanded the force from 5,000 to 43,000 since it was launched in 2003, but many allies – including Germany, France, Spain, Turkey and Italy – have refused to send significant numbers of combat troops to the south.
That refusal has opened up a rift with the US, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Romania whose troops in the southern provinces have borne the brunt of Taliban violence over the past year. Canada has threatened to pull its 1,700 troops out of Kandahar next year unless allies provide 1,000 reinforcements.
Germany in particular has bristled at recent US criticism, insisting its 3,300 troops in Afghanistan are doing important work supporting reconstruction in the relatively stable north.
Defence minister Franz Josef Jung announced yesterday that Germany would send an additional 200 troops in a quick reaction force to help in the north, but flatly refused to deploy to the south, despite a written appeal from Mr Gates this week.
“I think it would be a very big mistake if we would transfer our responsibility from the north to the south,” Mr Jung said in Berlin.
The public squabbling over troop contributions worries Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who fears it is undermining allied solidarity.
“We as the alliance should really be careful in not starting a sort of public force generation exercise,” Mr de Hoop Scheffer said this week. “It obscures the successes in Afghanistan.”
Many European governments are under public pressure not to send troops to the Afghan battlefields, some think it better to focus on reconstruction in the more stable areas rather than pursuing the insurgents, other say their militaries are stretched elsewhere.
However, there are tentative signs that some are considering a change of heart. French news reports have suggested President Nicolas Sarkozy may reverse Paris’ resistance to US appeals for help in the south.
Le Monde reported that France was considering sending 700 paratroopers to the south, following an earlier decision to deploy ground attack planes to Kandahar and combat training units with Afghan forces in the neighbouring southern province of Uruzgan.
According to the report in the Parisian daily, Mr Sarkozy could announce the deployment at an April Nato summit in Bucharest, Romania.
Belgium said last week it would send four F-16 fighter planes to join the Nato force in Kandahar, its first deployment to the south. Poland has been steadily increasing his contribution with troops and much needed helicopters for use anywhere in Afghanistan.
The Vilnius talks will also discuss Kosovo, where 16,000 Nato peacekeepers are braced for the threat of unrest if, as expected, the province declares independence from Serbia this month. Ministers may discuss widening the peacekeepers’ role to help train Kosovo’s own security forces.
Kosovo will feature in talks Friday between the Nato ministers and Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov. Russia opposes Kosovo’s independence and is also embroiled in disputes with Nato over missile defence and arms control in Europe.
