NATO leaders commit to Afghanistan for long haul
Source: Reuters
(Adds de Hoop Scheffer, Merkel, Putin) By Caren Bohan and Marcin Grajewski RIGA, Nov 29 (Reuters) - NATO pledged on Wednesday to stay the course to restore peace and stability in Afghanistan at a summit where nations offered guarded concessions to improve the mobility of allied forces battling Taliban insurgents. Alliance leaders also reversed policy on Serbia and Bosnia by offering them a first step towards NATO membership, despite concerns over war criminals still at large, and said other Balkan nations could expect entry invitations in 2008. "We are committed to an enduring role to support the Afghan authorities, in cooperation with other international actors," the 26 leaders of the military alliance declared in a joint statement after talks in the Latvian capital Riga. "It is winnable, it is being won, but not yet won," said NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer of the most dangerous ground combat in the alliance's 57-year history. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose troops with Canadian and Dutch soldiers are bearing the brunt of daily violence in southern Afghanistan, said all NATO leaders agreed that NATO's credibility "was on the line" over Afghanistan. U.S. President George W. Bush said success in Afghanistan could come only if allies accepted "difficult assignments" after alliance commanders complained the mission has been hobbled by limits many nations set on how their forces are deployed. Blair's official spokesman said Bulgaria, Spain and NATO aspirant Macedonia had offered more forces and de Hoop Scheffer said countries had pledged to lift or ease limits that would make 26,000 of the 32,000-strong NATO peace force more mobile. But many major nations, including France, Germany and Italy said their contingents could only be moved to Afghanistan's more perilous regions in emergencies. "We all agree that we help each other in case of emergency," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who resisted pressure on Germany to deploy outside its base in the relatively calm north. French officials said France could "on a case-by-case basis" send troops outside their zone around the capital Kabul, while Spain promised the use of its helicopters -- but not for combat. "REWARD FOR NON-COMPLIANCE" NATO leaders also backed a French idea for an Afghan "contact group". De Hoop Scheffer will explore the idea of a steering group like the committee of nations that has coordinated diplomacy in the Balkans for more than a decade. Some U.S. officials had voiced private misgivings about the idea because it might give Afghanistan's neighbour Iran, with which Washington has no ties, a seat at the table. While Afghanistan dominated the summit, leaders launched partnership ties with Serbia and Bosnia after the United States, Britain and finally the Netherlands dropped a demand that they first show full cooperation with the Hague war crimes court. Together with Montenegro they were invited to join NATO's "Partnership for Peace" programme, with the proviso they try to capture top war crimes indictees from the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic. Asked how the alliance could reach out to Serbia only days after its officials were still complaining of poor cooperation from Belgrade, de Hoop Scheffer denied NATO had gone soft. "We'll keep up the pressure," he said, saying Bosnia and Serbia, due to hold elections in January, would be monitored. But chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte attacked the NATO decision as a reward for non-compliance."The prosecutor is very surprised by the decision. She regrets that it was made, that NATO changed its position because it looks like a reward for not fully cooperating with the prosecutor," her spokesman said in The Hague. NATO as expected confirmed intentions to issue invitations to some candidate countries to join at its next summit in 2008, a signal aimed at aspirants Croatia, Macedonia and Albania. As part of the alliance's efforts to revamp itself from Cold War monolith to a more fleet-of-foot global security provider, NATO leaders declared a long-awaited 25,000-strong rapid reaction force fully operational. Russian President Vladimir Putin caused a diplomatic frenzy on Tuesday by offering to drop in on the former Soviet republic after the summit to congratulate President Jacques Chirac, a political ally, on his birthday. The visit, which would have been the first by a Russian leader to the Baltic states since they won independence from Moscow in 1991 and seen by some diplomats as a bid to upstage NATO, was finally cancelled due to scheduling difficulties. (Additional reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, Elizabeth Pineau, Francesca Piscioneri and Paul Taylor)
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