| | US fights to rescue Afghanistan mission AFP
02/02/2008
By Lachlan Carmichael
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WASHINGTON - The United States has intensified its diplomatic drive to recruit more coalition troops for Afghanistan amid fears its allies could abandon a cornerstone of the US-led "war on terror."
Officials revealed that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has written letters to all the NATO allies to ask for more support while announcing that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would fly to Britain to discuss the stakes there.
The news came as Canada warned it could withdraw its 2,500 troops from Afghanistan if NATO fails to send reinforcements to the battle-ravaged south, a risk that appeared higher with Germany's refusal to deploy its forces there.
"NATO as an alliance has been looking at what it needs to do and what more needs to be done to fight the Taliban, to permit the Afghan people to have security so that reconstruction can take place," Rice told reporters Friday.
"We look forward to continued conversations with Poland and with all members of NATO," Rice said during a joint press conference with Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland, which has increased its troop commitment in Afghanistan.
The talks with Sikorski came a day after Rice discussed Afghanistan -- for which last year was the bloodiest since the ousting of the Taliban in 2001 -- with French Defense Minister Herve Morin.
Rice said North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign and defense ministers would be meeting over the next few weeks in the runup to a NATO summit in Bucharest in April.
Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack said Afghanistan will figure high on the agenda in Britain, the United States' staunchest ally in Afghanistan.
He masked the tension that reportedly exists behind the scenes when he did not give a direct reply on Germany's rejection of an urgent US call to deploy combat troops against a resurgent Taliban in the southern Kandahar region.
Nor would he comment directly on a report that Gates sent an "unusually stern" letter to his German counterpart last month demanding combat troops, helicopters and paratroopers for Afghanistan and charging that some NATO states were not pulling their weight.
But McCormack said: "I won't make a secret of the fact that we are encouraging all of our NATO allies to do everything they can in terms of contributing resources."
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Gates informed his counterparts of US plans to deploy 3,200 Marines in Afghanistan for six months, and asked them if their forces could replace the Marines when they come out.
Whitman declined to comment on the specifics of the letters, but indicated that they were not the same for each country.
General James Conway, the commander of the US Marine Corps, warned that as conditions improve in Iraq the US military should begin thinking about when to shift its focus to Afghanistan. Britain has already made a similar case.
Commanders in Afghanistan have been calling for around 7,500 extra troops to be deployed in the south. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) comprises some 42,000 troops from 39 countries.
In the last year, Britain has increased its presence in Afghanistan. There are about 7,700 British soldiers there, most of them in the restive southern region.
Belgium announced Friday that it would send four F-16 fighter-bombers and around a hundred soldiers from September 1 in Kandahar. Belgium currently has 418 troops in Afghanistan.
McCormack conceded there is "a risk the clock could be turned back on the gains" made since the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were toppled after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Richard Boucher, the State Department's pointman for Afghanistan, told a Senate hearing on Thursday that "the greatest threat to Afghanistan's future is abandonment by the international community."
US experts warned in reports earlier this week that Afghanistan will become a failed state unless urgent steps are taken to tackle worsening security.
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