NATO urges EU to do more in Afghanistan

Brussels, Nov 3: NATO today urged the European Union to do more to help the civilian reconstruction of Afghanistan as it battles to overcome resistance by Taliban fighters in the south of the country.

The US-led defence alliance made the appeal after hosting a conference with senior officials of the United Nations, World Bank and EU on coordinating security and reconstruction efforts.

''Particularly the EU has a great opportunity to make a significant and very timely difference in the area of the judiciary and the police,'' NATO's top civilian representative in Afghanistan, Ambassador Daan Everts, told a news conference.

''The goal is wide open. They just have to kick the ball,'' he said.

Everts said NATO could help the Afghan army defeat the Taliban insurgents, but others needed to help Afghanistan provide the ''soft'' human security and rule of law.

While the top of the Afghan judiciary and interior ministry had been shaken up with reformers committed to the rule of law, there was an acute need to train and equip judges and police and to build administrative capacity -- areas of EU expertise.

EU officials attended the meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels but left before a joint news conference, ostensibly because Thursday was a holiday in EU institutions.

UN official Chris Alexander said NATO's military offensive against the Taliban in south Afghanistan in the last two months, in which hundreds of guerrillas were killed, had shown the Islamist gunmen could be defeated and boosted NATO's popularity.

''The success of that operation injected enormous confidence in the population of Kandahar province ... A sense of confidence has returned to Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan (provinces) that had frayed earlier this year,'' he said.

He said the Taliban tactic of burning down schools built as part of the reconstruction effort had backfired, making the population more hostile to the Islamists.

Reuters