Iraq shadows Bush as he seeks help on Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, Nov 27 (Reuters) Escalating bloodshed and political tension in Iraq will shadow US President George W Bush at a NATO summit this week where he hopes to persuade Europeans to do more to quell violence in Afghanistan.

The Taliban's resurgence is a top issue for leaders gathering in Riga, Latvia. Violence in Afghanistan, where NATO commands a 32,000-strong force, is the worst since US and British-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001.

Bush, who leaves Washington today and stops first in Estonia, will urge European countries to boost troop contributions in Afghanistan and lift restrictions on their forces.

Analysts say Bush's clout at the NATO summit may be weakened by Iraq's deepening descent toward civil war and an embarrassing election defeat for his Republican party in a November 7 US vote dominated by anxiety over the war.

With Iraq in crisis after car bombings in a Shi'ite area of Baghdad killed more than 200 people on Thursday, Bush will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan following the Riga summit.

Radical Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr said his followers would quit the government if the Maliki-Bush meeting went ahead. The White House said it will go ahead with the meeting.

Riga is Bush's first encounter with European allies since the election in which Republicans lost control of the US Congress.

Europeans who opposed the war feel vindicated by the vote, but Bush and his counterparts -- intent on mending a trans-Atlantic rift opened after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq -- will play down tensions.

Events in Afghanistan were reaching a ''critical juncture,'' warned retired Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, a former US supreme allied commander in Europe. He told a briefing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that European politics and US commitments in Iraq may keep NATO from getting the resources it needs in Afghanistan.

''The resurgence of the Taliban and the weakness of the central government in Afghanistan will continue to threaten global security without aggressive support from the West,'' Ralston said.

The United States, Britain and Canada complain their soldiers are doing most of the fighting in the violent south. The United States has around 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 12,000 under NATO and 8,000 operating separately to train Afghan forces and conduct counter-terrorist operations in the mountains near Pakistan.

While seeking more troops, Bush also wants countries to drop ''caveats'' for their forces, such as those banning them from operating at night or engaging in combat altogether.

Bush also hopes to see NATO build stronger ties with Asia-Pacific allies like Japan, Australia and South Korea as well as with the Scandinavian countries of Finland and Sweden. Some NATO countries are too cool to the idea.

REUTERS PB BD1626