WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Defense Secretary Robert Gates headed to Scotland late Wednesday for talks on Afghanistan amid growing trans-Atlantic tensions over NATO allies' failure to provide promised troops and equipment to the international security force there.
Gates and defense ministers from countries whose troops are fighting in southern Afghanistan as part of a NATO-led force will meet for two days in Edinburgh to discuss the shortfalls and map a strategy to persuade other allies to do their part.
"I'm not ready to let NATO off the hook," Gates told US lawmakers Tuesday, sharply criticizing members of the alliance for failing to live up to commitments made more than a year ago at a summit in Riga.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Gates "has some clear ideas about what's wrong with our Afghan strategy."
"Over the next couple of days in Edinburgh he will have a chance to delve more deeply into those ideas with his NATO counterparts," he said, ahead of Gates' departure around 11:00 pm Wednesday (0400 GMT Thursday).
Rising Taliban violence has accentuated US concerns that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) lacks the troops and capabilities needed to mount a successful counter-insurgency.
ISAF is short three infantry battalions, 3,000 trainers for the Afghan police and army and about 20 medium and heavy lift and attack helicopters.
Gates said a US helicopter unit that has partly filled the shortfall will not be extended beyond January.
Some 60,000 international soldiers are helping the Afghan government deal with an insurgency in the war-torn country, struggling to stabilize it following the ousting of the Taliban by US-led forces in 2001.
Morrell said the US military is already filling another gap in military trainers, and cannot provide more to train Afghan police.
"That's why it's urgently needed that they get their trainers over there so we can concentrate on the Afghan army," he said. "US trainers are very much in demand and I don't know that there is the ability for us to take on the mission of our allies as well."
Gates said Tuesday the number of troops involved "are not all that big, which, frankly, is one of the sources of frustration to me in terms of our allies not being able to step up to the plate."
Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made clear there are limits to what the US military can provide in Afghanistan because its main effort is in Iraq.
"The war in Afghanistan is by design and necessity an economy of force operation. There is no getting around it," Mullen said. "In Afghanistan we do what we can. In Iraq we do what we must."
Gates acknowledged that rising violence, particularly in southern Afghanistan, has turned what some allies had expected would be a stabilization and reconstruction mission into a full-blown counter-insurgency campaign.
Around 218 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, the bloodiest since the Taliban-led insurgency started. Most of them were killed in combat.
Gates said NATO should take a step back and reassess what it wants to accomplish in Afghanistan over the next three to five years.
"I will be pursuing this in Scotland," he said. "Individual allies have undertaken an assessment of how they see the situation in Afghanistan. We will bring all of those together; NATO will.
"And my hope is that we can put together a thoughtful and persuasive approach that takes a longer-term view of where we want to be," he said.
US officials say that the Taliban is militarily no match for the NATO forces, but they worry about rising violence, particularly in the south, and eroding support for the government in Kabul.
Mullen called it a "classic insurgency" that required a well-coordinated counter-insurgency campaign.
ISAF forces operating in the south are from Britain, Canada, Australia, Estonia, Romania, the Netherlands and the United States.
Gates said France has agreed to provide a military advisory team in the south, filling a gap opened with the departure of some 200 Dutch troops.
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