ROME (AFP) — Italy is considering changing the rules for the deployment of its troops in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said after talks with his Canadian counterpart.
The statement came just days after Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said some of Italy's 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan might be redeployed to the south to fight the Taliban if NATO requested it.
Berlusconi told Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper he had begun rethinking the rules on Italy's troop deployment "in a spirit of solidarity with its allies," his office said in a statement late Wednesday.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has since September 2006 been pressing Germany, Italy and Spain to lift their ban on sending their troops into Afghan combat zones.
All three countries have deployed their troops away from the conflict-hit south of the country, restricting them to non-combat assignments. Italy's soldiers are deployed mainly in the western province of Herat, or in the capital Kabul.
Britain and the United States, whose soldiers have borne the brunt of the fighting alongside Afghan troops, have also called for more support from their European allies.
Canada has around 2,500 troops in southern Afghanistan and 82 of its soldiers have been killed there since 2002.
The country's parliament voted in April to extend its military mission in the volatile southern Afghanistan to 2011, provided its allies sent reinforcements.
ISAF, which comprises some 47,000 troops from 40 nations, is trying to spread the rule of Afghanistan's weak central government and foster reconstruction.
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