RIGA, Nov 28: Nato leaders reported progress on Tuesday in freeing up more troops to fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, signalling that some nations had agreed to drop limits on their forces just before an alliance summit.
US President George W. Bush appealed to allies to provide more soldiers with fewer national restrictions for the most dangerous ground mission in Nato’s 57-year history.
Several Nato nations have caveats that keep their troops out of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, where Taliban forces are strengthening.
“To succeed in Afghanistan, Nato allies must provide the forces Nato military commanders require. Member nations must accept difficult assignments if we expect to be successful,” President Bush said.
Nato’s military commander expressed optimism that alliance members would lift enough restrictions on their troops to better combat a Taliban-led insurgency in southern Afghanistan.
“Hopefully we will see some progress there,” US General James Jones told reporters in the Latvian capital ahead of a Nato summit dominated by Afghanistan.
“If not, it gets more expensive because it means we have to find nations willing to send more troops to do the jobs that have to be done, and it becomes more costly and less efficient,” he said.
Asked if the nations involved were France, Spain and Italy, he said in French: “On verra (We shall see).”
“Zero caveats is probably not on the cards ... but the ones that inhibit the commander's ability to manoeuvre his force at a time when he needs to are the ones we are going after,” Gen Jones said.
He said that he had asked alliance members, whose countries are taking part in the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to review the caveats.
“We had about a 10 to 15 per cent positive trend,” Gen Jones said, and he calculated that improvement “translates to about 2,000 troops”, which could be used more effectively.
British, Canadian and Dutch troops have borne the brunt of recent fighting in south and east Afghanistan, leading to calls on countries like Germany, France, Italy and Spain, in relatively peaceful regions, to be more flexible.
Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said it was unacceptable that allied forces in south Afghanistan were 20 per cent below the required strength.
“Afghanistan is mission possible,” he said, urging allies to deliver the resources to complete the job and pointing to progress in Afghan public health, education and economic growth.
A Nato spokesman said the secretary-general would ask all leaders to confirm they would come to the aid of any ally in “emergency situations” when Nato soldiers’ lives were at risk -- a time-honoured Nato principle.
De Hoop Scheffer gave a glimpse of Nato's exit strategy in an apparent effort to reassure nervous Europeans they do not face an open-ended commitment in a country where guerrilla warfare defeated the Soviet army in the 1980s.
“I would hope that by 2008, we will have made considerable progress -- with ... effective and trusted Afghan security forces gradually taking control,” he said. But he said any talk of withdrawals at present in Afghanistan was premature.
French President Jacques Chirac said Nato would be able to declare its elite new force ready for action at the alliance summit.
''In Riga, the Nato Rapid Response Force will be declared fully operational,'' Mr Chirac said in a statement posted on his presidency website ahead of the summit.
Speaking before leaving for Riga, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Germany's N24 television she would do everything in her power to help ensure Afghanistan is a success for Nato.
“In emergencies we can help out in the south. But our place is in the north, where 40 per cent of Afghanistan's population live. And it would be wrong to neglect the north now,” she said.
