AFGHANISTAN:France and other Nato countries that have been resisting Anglo-US pressure for months to send troops to hotspots in southern Afghanistan last night offered a compromise.
The deal, under which the countries would now send reinforcements "in extremis", emerged on the first day of the Nato summit in the Latvian capital at which US president George Bush urged them to play a full part in the action.
The US, Britain, Canada and The Netherlands have suffered 90 per cent of the casualties in Afghanistan, most of them in fierce fighting with the Taliban in the south, where there is a 20 per cent shortfall in troops.
Until yesterday, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, stationed mainly in the relatively calm north, had refused to send combat reinforcements south, citing national restrictions on their missions.
But Mr Bush, in a speech shortly after his arrival in Riga, took a swipe at the countries, though without naming them.
He said defeating the Taliban would require the "full commitment of our alliance" and commanders on the ground had to have the resources and flexibility to do their jobs. He said an attack on one was an attack on all, and this remained true whether on home soil or a Nato mission abroad.
Earlier, Mr Bush was even more direct: "Member nations must accept difficult assignments if we expect to be successful."
British prime minister Tony Blair, on a stopover in Copenhagen en route to Riga, echoed Mr Bush.
The summit, attended by the leaders of the 26 member states, turned the centre of Riga almost into a ghost town, with most shops and other businesses closed and streets blocked off.
At a press conference, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary general, said it was unacceptable that there was a 20 per cent troop shortfall in the south. He sweetened his comments by hinting at an exit route, saying Afghan forces could begin to take over from Nato forces in 2008.
But military chiefs have privately predicted that their forces will be in the country for at least another decade.
A Nato source said the secretary general planned last night to ask each country to confirm it would help out in the south in an emergency and that some had already agreed to drop their caveats.
The compromise falls short of calls by the Nato command, backed by the US and Britain, for an extra 2,500 troops for the south. But the source said announcements of some extra troops were in the pipeline and that a reserve force would be in place by February.
Gen James Jones, Nato's supreme commander, welcomed the compromise. "It is a movement in a positive direction that is encouraging," he said.
Gen Jones told a press conference he had approached member states to remove 50 key restrictions and had had a 10 to 15 per cent success rate. "That translates to about 2,000 more troops," he said.
French president Jacques Chirac is offering to make sporadic deployments outside Kabul on a "case by case" basis.
Spain and Italy are now also prepared to send troops south in an emergency. However, the German government was given a strict mandate by its parliament.
Speaking before leaving for Riga, German chancellor Angela Merkel said:
"In emergencies we can help out in the south. But our place is in the north, where 40 per cent of Afghanistan's population live. And it would be wrong to neglect the north now."
The German foreign ministry insisted the offer to help in the south did not amount to a change in policy.