WASHINGTON: When Nato voted in December to shoulder a larger and far riskier assignment in Afghanistan, an alliance born in the Cold War seemed suddenly to be entering a new and ambitious stage. But the resistance of the usually steadfast Dutch has thrown the mission into doubt, as well as the broader, long-term plans of the Bush administration to rely more heavily on its traditional partners in military operations around the world.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which now has 9,000 troops patrolling generally safer parts of the country, agreed to take on the larger part of the burden from US forces that are now in charge, and to send troops into the nation’s south, where former Taliban members have been stepping up insurgent operations.

But a minority in the Dutch parliament is seeking to bring the plans to a halt, arguing that the task would be too dangerous and that the 1,400 Dutch troops to be sent would be ill prepared to face the heavy combat situations they might encounter.

“We think it would be very unwise to go with what is basically a peace mission in what is (now) basically a war area,” Bert Bakker, a member of parliament who speaks for the D66 party, told Radio Netherlands on Sunday.

The issue is to be debated in the Dutch parliament, and brought to a vote. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Dutch Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, European and American officials have all weighed in in hopes of adding pressure on the Dutch to take part.

In the meantime, the Dutch situation has stirred anxiety in Washington about whether European allies are going to remain a dependable part of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’, and whether it can continue with its plans to build future military operations around them.

A Dutch rejection of the Afghan effort ‘would send a powerful signal’, said a senior US official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of current diplomacy. “It’s not as if anyone can doubt that we’re in a global counter-insurgency fight.”

Analysts said that of greatest concern to the administration was the idea that Nato members would be able to pick and choose which joint fights they took part in.

“They’re worried about the dilution of the principle of alliance solidarity,” said Charles A. Kupchan, a top Europe scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations who worked as a National Security Council aide under former president Clinton. “This is a microcosm of a much bigger debate about how joint military operations will work in the new world.”

A negative decision by the Dutch is unlikely to trigger other defections, but there have been signs in recent years that some Nato members are less willing to stick with the group.

After sustained pressure from the United States, Nato agreed in 2004 to send a mission to Iraq to train Iraqi security personnel. Some member countries, however, put up only a small number of trainers, and Germany only trains troops outside Iraq — “An opt-out of sorts,” Kupchan said. While Nato members have endorsed the Afghan mission from the start, many of them have resisted pressure to put up more money and equipment for that undertaking, or for other joint missions. Nato member countries currently have only two aircraft for operations across the entire expanse of Afghanistan.

The unwillingness of many countries to join US forces in counter-terrorism operations may reflect in part a continuing worldwide backlash against US policies. Kupchan said the trend is “in some strange way a revenge of sorts for America’s desire to go with ‘coalitions of the willing’ “ rather than traditional alliances at the start of the Iraq war.

Dutch leaders began to have second thoughts about the mission after Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Dutch officials in a meeting that they would undeniably take many more casualties in Oruzgan province, the senior US official said.

The Dutch have traditionally been strong supporters of US-European military efforts, and Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has supported the Afghan deployment. But a small centrist party in his ruling coalition has balked, fearing that the Dutch troops will be caught unprepared. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service