Nato agrees fast takeover of all Afghan peacekeeping

PORTOROZ, Slovenia - Nato has agreed to take command of peacekeeping across all of insurgency-hit Afghanistan next month, following a pledge by the United States to transfer an extra 12,000 troops to its force.

Pentagon officials said the transfer of troops currently in Afghanistan's eastern region would entail the biggest deployment of US troops under foreign command since World War Two.

The accord came as European nations failed to plug all troop shortfalls identified by commanders battling a fierce Taleban insurgency, and will mean the United States providing 14,000 of some 32,000 Nato troops that will be under British command.

"I am grateful that the United States has decided to bring its forces under ISAF," Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters after a Nato meeting in Slovenia, referring to Nato's International Security Assistance Force.

"It should not be used as an argument that we can now rest on our laurels," he added, urging other allies to come forward with extra troops for the more dangerous south.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was "perfectly understandable" if other Nato allies restricted where their troops could operate, but added it undermined Nato's flexibility on the ground.

"The aggregation of that is the situation that's really not acceptable," he told a news conference. "I believe a little more progress was made today and we'll just have to keep working on it."

The US troop transfer had been expected later in the year, but alliance officials said battles with resurgent guerrillas in the south showed the urgent need to pool British, Dutch and Canadian troops under Nato with separate US forces.

Afghanistan is experiencing the most serious violence since hardline Taleban Islamists were removed in 2001, and Nato knows its credibility as a genuine fighting force is at stake in the toughest combat in its 57-year history.

Nearly 140 foreign troops, most of them American, British and Canadian, have been killed in fighting or accidents during operations since January, and Nato has acknowledged it underestimated the scale of Taleban resistance.

ISAF currently has just over 20,000 troops from 37 countries operating in the capital Kabul and the north, west and south. The bulk of them are European.

The US-led Operation Enduring Freedom coalition has a similar number. Some US forces will remain outside ISAF command to mount search-and-destroy missions against major Taleban and al Qaeda targets.

De Hoop Scheffer said the alliance made some progress at the talks in the coastal resort of Portoroz in raising 2500 extra troops requested by commanders to reinforce operations in the south, but acknowledged there were still shortages.

Germany, whose parliament on Thursday agreed to extend for another year the mandate of its 3000-strong mission in the relatively calm north of Afghanistan, once again declined at the talks to send any troops to the south.

Other large western European nations including France, Italy and Spain have all refused to send troops to the region, saying their armed forces are at full stretch elsewhere.

Poland has offered 1000 troops to be deployed by next February, and Romania is expected to offer a similar number. Bulgarian Defence Minister Veselin Bliznakov told Reuters it could take a decision to send more troops in October.

Alliance sources said Canada, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Slovakia declared intentions to commit extra forces at some point but did not say how many more troops such offers would add.

- REUTERS