NATO chiefs study call for more Afghan troops

WARSAW, Sep 8 (Reuters) NATO defence chiefs gathered in Warsaw today to discuss raising troop levels in Afghanistan after top alliance officials conceded they had underestimated Taliban resistance and needed reinforcements.

The talks were due to take place after at least 16 people were killed today in the deadliest suicide bombing in the Afghan capital Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, an attack which witnesses said was aimed at a NATO convoy.

NATO's top commander of operations, US General James Jones, said yesterday he would urge national military chiefs at the talks to offer up to 2,500 extra troops on top of the roughly 18,500 which NATO already has there.

Jones also called for additional helicopters and transport aircrafts to sustain an alliance offensive against the Taliban before the onset of winter, and ensure that NATO remains on track to push into east Afghanistan in coming weeks.

''We need to discuss the full range of our activity in Afghanistan. This will include our troop level and the progress we have made there so far,'' General Ray Henault, the Canadian general who will chair the talks among chiefs of staff of NATO's 26 member nations, told Reuters as he arrived for the talks.

The talks go on until Sunday and are not expected to yield pledges of troops immediately, not least because several key nations insist their armies are already stretched by commitments in Lebanon, Iraq, the Balkans and elsewhere.

NATO agreed to expand its peacekeeping operation from the north, west and Kabul into the more dangerous south last month despite shortfalls of around 15 per cent in the total personnel and material requested by the military for the job.

100 PER CENT British, Dutch and Canadian troops leading the expansion have taken heavy casualties fighting Taliban guerrillas putting up fiercer resistance than expected and commanders are now urgently asking countries to fully meet their existing requests.

''We want the nations to give the full 100 per cent of what they agreed. We do not want more. We will not emerge here with some directives, telling the countries to do this or that,'' said Colonel Brett Boudreau, Henault's spokesman.

Jones wants a reserve battalion -- typically 500 to 800 troops -- plus the support personnel needed to sustain extra helicopters and aircraft in the dusty terrain of south Afghanistan, meaning an additional 2,000-2,500 soldiers.

Germany, which leads NATO operations in the relatively quiet north, is expected to come under pressure to make reinforcements available for the south despite increasingly vocal political opposition in Berlin to such a move.

Spain and Italy both have troops elsewhere in Afghanistan which could theoretically be redeployed to the south, but NATO officials are privately not optimistic they would agree to shift troops south.

''It's not impossible, but they are engaged in the Lebanon peacekeeping mission now and they would have to deal with the domestic political sensitivities to a dangerous new deployment in south Afghanistan,'' one alliance source said.

French diplomats note France already has some 1,200 troops based in Kabul plus 200 special forces involved in the US-led hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in the east.

''Not to mention our involvement in international missions in Kosovo, Congo, Lebanon. Our room for manoeuvre is pretty limited -- we don't expect to be at the top of the list of those being asked to contribute more,'' said one.

REUTERS MS KP1840