NATO south Afghan mission has enough troops -Canada

OTTAWA, Feb 16 (Reuters) Senior Canadian military officials, who have long complained there are not enough NATO troops in southern Afghanistan, said today that alliance force levels in the region are now adequate.

Canada has 2,500 troops in the southern city of Kandahar and as recently as last October it said it could not maintain the mission without more support.

But the official tone changed sharply after President George W Bush said yesterday the United States would keep higher troop levels in Afghanistan ahead of an expected surge in Taliban attacks and called on NATO to commit more troops.

''The United States is putting in more forces, Britain is putting in more forces. We have sufficient force structure on the ground in the south at this moment to do the job that we have to do,'' said General Rick Hillier, chief of Canada's defense staff.

Canada complains that it and a handful of other nations bore the brunt of fighting with the Taliban last year while other NATO members stationed their troops in quieter parts of Afghanistan and restricted what they could do.

''Would we like to see more countries down there with us than the nine that are there? Of course we would,'' Hillier told reporters after speaking to a meeting of defense officials.

''Right now we are in a much better position from NATO's perspective in my view now than we were a year ago.'' Since sending troops to Afghanistan in 2002 as part of the US-led war on terror, Canada has lost 44 soldiers and a diplomat -- most of them killed last year.

Canadian Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor told the meeting that ''I think ... we'll be able to do our job in the south.'' NATO says it expects the Taliban to mount increased attacks once the snows melt but Hillier said he doubts that militants would repeat last year's tactics of trying to engage Alliance forces en masse.

''We think we'll see a surge in Taliban operations ... We don't believe for example that they will mass in conventional style warfare because when they do, they die,'' Hillier said.

''They learned some painful lessons ... when they tried to do that. We think they'll concentrate on suicide bombers, vehicle bombers, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and small ambushes, hit and run attacks.'' Canada's Afghan mission is due to expire in February 2009 and Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Friday that Ottawa would review its options closer to that date.

REUTERS KR KN2302