NATO-led nations meet to tackle Afghan insurgency

EDINBURGH - Countries with troops in southern Afghanistan will discuss on Friday how to tackle rising violence by Taliban insurgents and mounting U.S. calls for bigger contributions to NATO's Afghan mission.

Ministers are also increasingly looking at how to boost non-military efforts in Afghanistan, with a view to helping the Afghan government provide basic services and dissuade local people from siding with the insurgents.

Defence Secretary Des Browne will host the meeting of eight nations in Edinburgh, having just returned from a visit to Afghanistan.

"The progress is tangible. But military power can only ever be part of the solution," Browne said in a statement.

"We must build on our hard won military gains and go further to help the people of Afghanistan to provide their own security, governance and economic development," he said.

Insurgent violence is at its highest level in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.

Compared to a year ago, violence overall is up 27 percent and has risen 60 percent in the southern province of Helmand, according to the U.S. military.

Britain and the United States have long called for other nations to shoulder more of the burden in Afghanistan. But U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has turned up the volume.

Gates has also called on NATO to draw up a paper setting out its aims for Afghanistan over the next few years and how both the alliance and the Afghan government plan to meet them.

"The Afghanistan mission has exposed real limitation in the way the alliance is organised, operated and equipped," Gates told the U.S. Congress on Tuesday.

Gates said he was not ready to let NATO "off the hook" and voiced frustration at allies not "stepping up to the plate."

In particular, Gates has urged other allies to provide more helicopters, troops and thousands of experts to train Afghan forces.

"There will be a lot of useful discussion about whether we are doing enough to support not just the Afghan army but other state institutions, like the Afghan police," said a senior official from one NATO country, declining to be named.

Washington and London are leading the push for an international "super envoy" to increase coordination of aid efforts in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has more than 40,000 troops from some 40 countries.

About 11,000 troops from Britain, the United States, the Netherlands, Canada, Estonia, Romania, Denmark and Australia are based in the force's southern sector.