U.S. leaning on Turkey to send more troops to Afghanistan
Friday, December 4, 2009 E-Mail this story Free Headline Alerts
WASHINGTON — The United States is pressing Turkey to send additional troops to Afghanistan.
Officials said the State Department has sent a request to Ankara for a significant increase in the Turkish troop presence in Afghanistan. They said Turkey was one of several NATO countries approached regarding the U.S. plan to enlarge the military campaign in Afghanistan.
"The U.S. attitude is 'If we send more troops under the NATO umbrella, then the rest of the alliance should do the same,'" an official said.
On Dec. 3, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels. The two-day meeting was convened to discuss the alliance's strategy in Afghanistan.
"I think you will see some pledges right now and some at a later stage," NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, referring to a conference on Afghanistan in January 2010, said on Dec. 2. "Then you will see a buildup of troops during 2010."
Officials said the United States has not specified the number of additional troops requested from Ankara. Turkey, with the second largest military in NATO, has a 750-member non-combat contingent in Afghanistan.
The U.S. request came in wake of President Barack Obama's announcement of a military surge of more than 30,000 troops in Afghanistan. Obama called on NATO to join the surge as part of a strategy to stabilize Afghanistan to enable a withdrawal in mid-2011.
So far, NATO has been working on a plan to send at least another 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, about half the number sought by Washington. The United States has been the dominant partner in the NATO stabilization campaign in Afghanistan, which contains more than 70,000 troops.
"We must all do more," Rasmussen said. "We must now demonstrate that multilateralism produces results."