"There are no good Taliban. We are not in agreement with them (NATO) in counting on the Taliban again, in courting them for tactical objectives," Safonov told the Ria Novosti news agency, adding that he judged that NATO's strategy was "not very effective".

"For example, there is neither a mandate nor a will for the international armed forces to combat drug trafficking," he said. He added that Russia had always considered Afghanistan to be "a dead end, and it is getting worse".

The leaders of the 26 NATO states, meeting in Riga, on Wednesday reaffirmed their military engagement in Afghanistan aimed at supporting a democratic government.

earlier related report
'Afghanistan is being won,' says NATO, bolstering troops
Riga (AFP) Nov 29 - NATO declared Wednesday it was winning the battle to set Afghanistan on the road to peace and democracy and pledged more troops with greater flexibility to confront a ferocious Taliban-led insurgency. "There is not the slightest reason to voice doom and gloom on Afghanistan. Afghanistan is being won," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at the end of a two-day summit in Latvia.

In a declaration, the 26 NATO heads of state and government, including US President George W. Bush, pledged "to ensure that ISAF has the forces, resources and flexibility needed to ensure the mission's continued success."

NATO has called for up to 2,500 more troops to be deployed in Afghanistan, and for soldiers in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to be redeployed from relatively stable areas to hotspots in the east and south, where the Taliban insurgency is fiercest.

At the summit, the troop requirement was almost entirely filled, Scheffer said, but officials said that air assets like helicopters and transport planes were still needed.

"The statement of requirements has an overall fill of 90 percent. Several countries have offered equipment," he told reporters.

"Early next year ISAF will increase from three to four battalions."

But the head of NATO's military committee, Canadian General Ray Henault, said the alliance would have to wait and see just how many countries would make good on their pledges to send more troops and equipment.

"We asked countries to take a new look at their capacities, and I expect that we will have concrete responses in around two weeks," he said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which has been resisting pressure to redeploy any of its 2,700 troops from the relatively calm north to trouble spots elsewhere, said that "the idea of dividing Afghanistan into safe and unsafe zones is wrong."

"We have the ISAF mandate and Operation Enduring Freedom and we do not envisage changing anything in either, but to continue to fulfill our mission under these mandates," Merkel said.

As NATO leaders struck deals for Afghanistan, a suicide attacker in the southern province of Kandahar detonated a motorbike laden with explosives close to a NATO convoy, killing a civilian.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, which this year has lost 32 of the 2,500 soldiers it has in Afghanistan, was upbeat about the summit.

Alliance members are "getting a sense of the necessity to step up to the plate," he said, stressing that "with just a little more help we can move this in an irreversibly positive direction."

NATO took command of ISAF in Afghanistan in 2003. It comprises some 32,000 troops from 37 nations.

Nearly 12,000 of them are from the United States, with Britain being the second-largest contributor at 6,000 soldiers, followed by Germany and Canada.

NATO leaders backed a French proposal to set up a "contact group" tasked with coordinating actions to prevent Afghanistan slipping back into chaos.

The group would be modelled on one set up for the Balkans in the 1990s that comprised the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

NATO also opened its doors to Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, sparking the anger of the UN tribunal trying suspected war criminals from the Balkans.

"Taking into account the importance of long-term stability in the western Balkans and acknowledging the progress made so far... we have invited these three countries to join Partnership for Peace," said the NATO declaration.

The programme is considered a key stepping stone for countries hoping to join NATO, but being invited into the partnership does not guarantee membership.

Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte was surprised by the invitation to Bosnia and Serbia, which she called "regrettable" because "it looks like a reward for the lack of cooperation" with the International International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and war-time military chief Ratko Mladic have been indicted by the ICTY. Both are at large, with Mladic believed to have been in hiding in Serbia itself.

NATO chiefs also declared "fully operational" the alliance's 25,000-strong rapid-response force, which can be ready for deployment within five days for combat missions or disaster relief operations lasting up to a month.

earlier related report
US still hopes for broader NATO role in Afghanistan
Aboard Air Force One (AFP) Nov 29 - The United States still hopes that its NATO partners, including Germany, will agree to drop restrictions on the use of their forces in Afghanistan, a top US official said Wednesday.

"I'd like to remove all the caveats. I think it's important that NATO allies do (that), but it's also good that NATO allies understand that solidarity is critical," said Dan Fried, assistant secretary of state for European affairs.

Fried, who briefed reporters about the just-ended North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Latvia, was speaking as US President George W. Bush traveled to Amman for a high-stakes meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

A key issue at the NATO summit was the September call for reinforcements for troops fighting the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan after a sharp surge in their attacks.

But few allies have been willing to provide troops, or lift conditions on their use. The conditions range from geographical restrictions on where troops can be sent -- the biggest problem -- to a refusal to fight at night or in winter conditions for lack of proper equipment.

Asked whether the United States was disappointed that Germany had not been more flexible, the US diplomat replied that Berlin was assessing the situation and took pains to praise the German contribution.

"There is a debate in Germany, and let's understand how difficult it is for Germany, given its own history and its national reluctance to engage in war-fighting," he said.

"Germany has come a long way: To send troops into potentially dangerous situations -- even in the north of Afghanistan, where they are -- is a big step. And these troops are doing a good job in the north," he said.

"So I don't want to be critical of Germany, I don't want to belittle the contribution or suggest that it isn't valuable. We'd like all NATO countries involved in Afghanistan to be (operating) without caveats. But see what leaders come back with and let's see, in particular, how the debate in Germany develops," he said.

NATO has been surprised this year by the resurgence of the Taliban militia after it was ousted by a US-led coalition in 2001. Taliban attacks, most intense in Afghanistan's south and east, have claimed some 3,700 lives this year, four times more than in 2005.

While the NATO summit did not yield a breakthrough on easing the restrictions, Fried noted gratefully that "if NATO were not in Afghanistan, the US might be there with very, very few allies.

"Coalitions of the willing have their drawbacks, their limitations," he said, in a reference to the group of countries that supported the US-led March 2003 invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

Two pillars of NATO, France and Germany, opposed the war, but Fried said that the alliance was in broad agreement that it was now crucial that the United States succeed in Iraq.

"There is a universal understanding that Iraq is difficult, that there is a serious struggle underway, and the sense I got is, 'Yes it's difficult, but we really don't want this to fail,'" he said.

Asked whether Iraq clouded talks about Afghanistan, the diplomat said that "a lot of the allies around the table -- both at the president's dinner and (US) Secretary (of State Condoleezza) Rice's dinner -- made the point that we should not fail."

"The sense we had was that a lot of the allies understand very well what is at stake and are not importing the debate about Iraq -- which is an important debate -- are not importing that into the alliance and are not extending that to all things the alliance is doing," said Fried.

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