NATO Plans to Expand Afghanistan Mission

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, center, speaks with soldiers of the Afghanistan National Army during a visit at the Military Training Center in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday July 20, 2006. The Afghanistan National Army is trained by British troops from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The NATO mission to Afghanistan's insurgency-wracked south will be "tough" but the alliance must not fail in its bid to promote reconstruction and defeat the Taliban, NATO's visiting secretary-general said Thursday. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) (Geert Vanden Wijngaert - AP)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- NATO's top commander said Friday the alliance likely will expand its Afghan mission by year's end to include the entire country, including the lawless east where militants killed a coalition soldier in the latest fighting.

The Dutch military said its commandos killed 18 militants in an operation to clear rugged hills near a base for its forces deploying in the insurgency-wracked south, where NATO is preparing to take over the security command by the end of this month.

In recent months the region has witnessed some of the worst fighting since the Taliban was ousted in late 2001. The militants have stepped up suicide attacks and assaults on Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces. More than 800 people, mostly militants, have died in violence nationwide since mid-May.

NATO's supreme commander, U.S. Gen. James L. Jones, said member nations were expected to approve a plan to expand across Afghanistan at the alliance's November summit in Latvia.

"Certainly by the Riga summit or sooner we should be able to achieve this," Jones told reporters in the southern city of Kandahar.

NATO forces already have a presence in the capital, Kabul, and the western and northern regions.

Two senior British army commanders said that Taliban guerrillas posed a severe threat to NATO troops but would be beaten, despite significant shortfalls in logistical support.

Lt. Gen. David Richards, the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, told a London think tank that the force lacked sufficient helicopters and reserve troops for rapid deployment.

Richards said the financing and logistical backup for the mission might not "keep up" with the requirements of NATO operations in Afghanistan.

"This will, undoubtedly, jeopardize success," he said. "We are not unable to operate, but we could do it more efficiently," he said.

Brigadier Ed Butler, the commander of Britain's 5,000-strong contribution of troops to the NATO mission, said the level of Taliban resistance to NATO forces had surprised him.

"We knew it was going to be tough, and we knew that the Taliban would test our resilience and, possibly, in some cases we have been a little surprised by the ferocity and persistence of the Taliban," Butler said during a visit to an army base east of London. "But hopefully it will not be too long before the tide does turn."