Karzai and US VP Cheney urge more from NATO in Afghanistan
KABUL (AFP) — US Vice President Dick Cheney and Afghan President Hamid Karzai jointly urged NATO Thursday to sustain and even expand its work to crush extremists in Afghanistan and rebuild the war-torn country.
"We believe that that commitment needs to continue and perhaps be reinforced," said the vice president, who made a surprise trip here from Oman during a nine-day visit to the Middle East and Turkey.
Cheney met Karzai to assess internationally aided efforts to fight the Taliban, a focus of a NATO summit in early April where Washington hopes alliance members will increase troops and resources.
"The United States and the other members of the coalition need to have a sufficient force here to be able to ensure security," Cheney told reporters after meeting Karzai in the fortress-like presidential palace.
Karzai said that Afghan security forces, being built with international assistance, would not be able to stand on their feet for some time.
"Some day Afghanistan will be fully in charge of the security of this country, defending the borders," the US-backed president said. "But that is not going to be anytime soon."
The Taliban insurgency was its deadliest last year, with unrest killing more than 8,000 people, according to United Nations figures. Most of the dead were rebels but 1,500 civilians also lost their lives, the UN says.
The country is braced for another tough year and military officials have called for NATO partners to send more troops and equipment, especially to the south of the country where the fighting is the most fierce.
After some bickering in recent weeks about the campaign in Afghanistan, officials are hoping the upcoming NATO summit beginning April 2 will see extra pledges of troops, equipment and resources.
The United States is by far the largest provider of troops to Afghanistan, with deployments to a US-led coalition that helped oust the Taliban in late 2001 as well as to NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
Together the coalition and ISAF comprise about 65,000 soldiers from around 40 nations, some of which faced their most intense fighting in decades in Afghanistan last year.
Cheney's visit, kept under wraps for security reasons, came as Afghanistan celebrated New Year and the arrival of spring amid tight security, with the Taliban-led insurgency traditionally picking up in the warmer weather.
A reinforcement of 3,600 US Marines started arriving in southern Afghanistan last week, ahead of the fighting season, to take part in ISAF operations and help the coalition train Afghan security forces.
Amid Afghan charges that some extremists use base camps in remote areas of Pakistan, Cheney said he expected the new government there to be as "good and effective" against Islamists following the defeat of President Pervez Musharraf's allies in elections last month.
"They have as big a stake as anyone else in dealing with the threat that sometimes emerges," he said, pointing to the slaying of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. "I have no reason to doubt their commitment."
Later, Cheney boarded a twin-engine CH-47 "Chinook" helicopter and swept 60 kilometres north of Kabul to Bagram Air Base, where he was to receive a classified briefing from senior officials and speak to US soldiers.
When the vice president last came to Afghanistan, in February 2007, a suicide bomber struck outside the base, killing at least 20 people.
This trip coincides with the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, which the United States invaded less than two years after toppling the Taliban from power in Afghanistan when they refused to hand over Osama bin Laden after 9/11.
Washington's distraction by Iraq has been blamed for enabling the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan. The extremists' campaign has picked up in the past two years, with a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks.
Cheney's trip to Afghanistan is part of a tour that includes stops in Iraq, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey. A senior aide stressed however it was not intended to set the stage for military action against Iran.
"That's not what these discussions are about," the aide told reporters on condition of anonymity.
