AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
NATO was expected to meet some of its troop shortfalls in volatile southern Afghanistan but not satisfy all its military needs to combat a tenacious insurgency there.
In two days of informal talks in Slovenia, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his NATO counterparts will examine where the extra reinforcements might come from, after Poland offered to speed up its deployment.
The meeting, in the coastal resort town of Portoroz, comes amid concern that international donors might renege on aid pledges they made early this year and undermine NATO's most ambitious military undertaking ever.
On the eve of the informal talks, Rumsfeld expressed confidence that the alliance's 26 allies would step forward with troops and equipment to fill gaps in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
Poland is expected to confirm comments by a NATO spokesman earlier this week that it will accelerate the deployment of its troops to Afghanistan and supply most of the reinforcements NATO needs on the ground in the south.
But a senior US official played down expectations that the defence ministers would meet all the targets — particularly for helicopters — of NATO commanders fighting the Taliban resurgence.
“I think we'll probably have more holes but we are hopeful the meeting will provide energy and focus to keep going with that,” said the official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity.
“Some of the things that have been difficult — air mobility, helicopters — if you look around allied inventories, people are very, very stretched with other missions around the world,” the official said.
US General James Jones, NATO's supreme commander, has struggled to find volunteers to provide some 2,000 more troops and equipment he believes are needed to take more ground in the south before the tough winter sets in.
ISAF is on a mission to spread the influence of President Hamid Karzai's weak central government by providing security and fostering reconstruction.
At the end of July, it embarked on a potentially perilous phase of this most ambitious of operations when it took command of international forces in the Taliban militia's southern heartland.
But the Taliban, ousted by the US-led military coalition in late 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has shown surprising resistance, backed by allies among drug runners and fighters loyal to local warlords.
More than 100 foreign soldiers have been killed in hostile action in Afghanistan this year, about half of them US troops, and Iraq-style suicide bombings have been on the rise.
Some 2,000 people, civilians, military and insurgents, have been killed.
In an interview with Thursday's Financial Times newspaper, British Defence Secretary Des Browne said that NATO had to learn from its troubles this time to avoid such troop shortfalls in the future.
“It needs to look at its structures and its bureaucracy so that it can generate force in a way that responds in real time to the needs. I think its becoming apparent in Afghanistan that the process of discussion is more complex than it needs to be,” he told the business daily.
Britain, along with Canada, has suffered growing casualties on their frontline in the south.
At the same time as it seeks to reclaim territory from the Taliban, ISAF, through provincial reconstruction teams, hopes to win hearts and minds by helping build new roads, bridges and schools, as well as provide jobs.
But development is lagging and the security enterprise faces failure if Afghans lose interest in democracy and turn once again to the Taliban.
Officials fear donors like the United Nations, the European Union or the Group of Eight, could forget Afghanistan — the world's biggest source of opium — amid developments in the Middle East, Iran or North Korea.
