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KABUL - Britain is poised to send extra troops to Afghanistan after Nato's Riga Summit ended with no significant extra pledges of soldiers and only a partial deal to use existing forces more flexibly.
Significantly, the proposed UK deployment will not be dependent on any withdrawal from Iraq. Military planners are said to have decided that sending a battalion-size additional force is possible on a temporary basis.
At the end of a two-day meeting in Riga, the Nato Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said that 26,000 of the 32,000 alliance soldiers will now operate without serious restrictions on their movement.
The deal fell far short of US and British hopes that other European nations would help take on the Taleban in Helmand province. Macedonia and Bulgaria were the only nations to offer more soldiers, with a pledge to send a rifle company each, though Spain will deploy two small teams to liase with the Afghan forces.
Intense pressure was placed on countries to abandon restrictions on the use of their forces. The Netherlands and Romania agreed to scrap theirs while France will allow its soldiers out of the capital, Kabul. Seven other nations agreed to reduce such "caveats" and officials said that the changes would be the equivalent of freeing-up around 2000 troops. All countries will allow their soldiers to come to the aid of other Nato troops in an emergency.
- INDEPENDENT
