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NATO tackles Afghan tactics, leadership wrangle
2009-04-04
STRASBOURG, France (AFP) - NATO leaders sought new ways to tackle the Taliban in Afghanistan at the alliance's 60th anniversary summit on Saturday, as differences festered over its future secretary general. After a minute's silence to mark the fallen in allied operations from the Balkans to Afghanistan, leaders meeting in Strasbourg set their minds on ways to provide security for key Afghan elections in August. "We can't allow ourselves to lose," France's President Nicolas Sarkozy declared at the opening session of the talks on Afghanistan. "Over there, the freedom of part of the world is at stake." "Afghanistan is a real test of our credibility," added summit co-host Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, insisting that international terrorist groups must not again be allowed to set up Afghan safe havens. The hosts were responding in part to calls from US President Barack Obama, who has used his first diplomatic tour of Europe to call for his reluctant European allies to step up their involvement in the Afghan war. There are 70,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, mostly under NATO command, battling Taliban-led rebels, whose tenacious rebellion is spreading from the rugged and lawless tribal regions around the border with Pakistan. Obama has decided to send 21,000 extra US troops and is considering deploying 10,000 more, while asking Europe to contribute by providing more soldiers as well as civilian support staff to train the police. Sarkozy, who earlier met his NATO counterparts at the centre of a monumental footbridge connecting France and Germany, used the occasion to announce France's return to the alliance's military command. The meeting also honoured Albania and Croatia who this week became the 28-strong bloc's newest members. "Welcome to NATO, we are excited about your participation," Obama said, greeting the new states. "It is a measure of our vitality that we are still welcoming new members." Despite this optimism, the session was delayed for more than an hour as the leaders huddled in an impromptu meeting to try to overcome Turkish objections to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as next head of NATO. Obama held an hour-long telephone conversation with Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Saturday and the two men were joined on the line by Rasmussen, Turkish news agency Anatolia reported. Outside, demonstrators disrupted proceedings, blocking some routes to the summit venue, while Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi held up events in what appeared to be his latest diplomatic gaffe. Arriving on the German side of the Rhine River to be greeted on a red carpet Merkel before the walk to the French side, the Italian leader left his car still talking on his mobile telephone. He turned his back on his host and walked to the river bank still talking. Merkel appeared at first amused and then exasperated, and the others left Berlusconi behind to cross for the bridge ceremony. Following two days of attempts to breach the security cordon around the summit, anti-war protesters split into smaller groups and attempted to block several road junctions throughout the French city. Riot police fired tear gas to repulse a group of 1,000 protesters who tried to cross a bridge into the city centre, but another group managed to breach the outer security perimeter and block a tramline serving the venue. There were 25 arrests in the early clashes, which followed two days of violence on both sides of the Rhine. Obama was the star of Friday's opening festivities, and banged the drum for his new Afghan war strategy, but not even his presence could persuade members to agree on a new leader for the organisation. Most of the allies back Rasmussen, 56, to take on the post in July, and Germany's Merkel had pushed publicly for his appointment to be agreed Friday. But Turkey was angered by Rasmussen's failure to sanction Danish cartoonists who mocked the Prophet Mohammed and to close a Denmark-based television channel which Ankara says is a mouthpiece of Kurdish separatist rebels.
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