NATO leaders agreed to augment their force of 6,500 troops in Afghanistan with as many as 3,500 more [but] they rejected an appeal on Tuesday from President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to send the soldiers immediately.
Mr. Karzai, addressing the 26 NATO leaders and heads of state from the 22 other countries in the alliance's partnership program, begged for the new troops to be sent before elections in September. He said efforts to register voters had already been disrupted by violence, threatening the country's shaky progress toward democracy.
"I would like you to please hurry," Mr. Karzai said. "The Afghan people need that security today, and not tomorrow."
Reaction was cool. "We have rejected the request on the additional troops before the elections in Afghanistan," said Vecdi Gonul, defense minister of Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO.
Earlier in the meeting, the leaders agreed to deploy some of their forces in troubled areas outside the capital, Kabul. But officials said as many as 2,000 of the new troops would probably remain outside Afghanistan, to be deployed only when the alliance decided they were needed.
NY Times article
Mr. Karzai, addressing the 26 NATO leaders and heads of state from the 22 other countries in the alliance's partnership program, begged for the new troops to be sent before elections in September. He said efforts to register voters had already been disrupted by violence, threatening the country's shaky progress toward democracy.
"I would like you to please hurry," Mr. Karzai said. "The Afghan people need that security today, and not tomorrow."
Reaction was cool. "We have rejected the request on the additional troops before the elections in Afghanistan," said Vecdi Gonul, defense minister of Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO.
Earlier in the meeting, the leaders agreed to deploy some of their forces in troubled areas outside the capital, Kabul. But officials said as many as 2,000 of the new troops would probably remain outside Afghanistan, to be deployed only when the alliance decided they were needed.
If Karzai doesn't understand, Dick Cheney can probably make it plainer.
The French president, Jacques Chirac, one of the fiercest opponents of the American-led invasion, repeated his objections to NATO involvement inside postwar Iraq. The presence of troops under the NATO flag, he said, would be "dangerous, counterproductive and misunderstood by the Iraqi people."
Somebody's been paying attention.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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