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BRUSSELS, Sept 9: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), responding to widespread calls to improve security in Afghanistan, is to study extending its peacekeeping mission beyond Kabul, Secretary-General George Robertson said on Tuesday.
“This matter is being looked at inside Nato...and we’ll be looking for some military advice on how feasible that may be,” Mr Robertson told reporters a month after the alliance took command of the 5,000-strong, UN-mandated force.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai have urged the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to extend its reach to bring security to large areas of the country dominated by tribal warlords.
The ISAF has controlled Kabul and the key Bagram airbase, near the capital, since the United States and Afghan rebels ousted the Taliban government in 2001.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this month added their voices to the calls for Nato to expand its mission, although Western countries have been reluctant to commit more troops.
“You can’t have a suggestion made by the German foreign minister and the American secretary of defence without taking that seriously,” Mr Robertson said.
He added that Nato would also be in contact with the United Nations for consultations on changing ISAF’s mandate.
Germany wants to deploy a “provisional reconstruction team” (PRT) of between 230 and 450 troops in Kunduz, but because of its own constitution it could only do this with a UN mandate.
Such teams deployed so far by the United States and Britain have come under the command of a separate US-led force of some 11,500 troops still hunting down Taliban and Al Qaeda diehards.
AID AGENCIES DISAPPOINTED: Aid agencies on Tuesday expressed disa1ppointment that just 800 million dollars of US President George Bush’s vast 87 billion dollar request to Congress for Iraq and Afghanistan is earmarked for Afghan reconstruction.
“It’s rather less than we were hoping for,” said Paul Barker, Afghanistan country director for the US-based humanitarian organization, CARE International.
United States officials said the administration would also reallocate nearly 400 million dollars from its existing budget to boost the promised Afghan aid package to 1.2 billion dollars in fiscal year 2004.
Over the past two years the United States has allocated 1.8 billion dollars to relief and reconstruction in Afghanistan.
While the fresh aid represented an increase in US financial commitment, Mr Barker said Washington needed to look further ahead than just a one-year package.
“Afghanistan is not a one-year contract, there is a need for multi-year help for Afghanistan, probably of around 20 billion dollars,” he said.—AFP
