Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Wednesday's NATO summit in Bucharest may be remarkable for the presence of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, leader of the power against whose precursor the alliance was originally created. Moreover, Putin will follow the summit by taking its most powerful leader, President George W. Bush, back to his vacation home at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. But the formal bonhomie won't hide the escalating tension in the relationship between Washington and Moscow. President Bush on Tuesday strongly backed NATO membership bids by the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia, a move fiercely opposed by Moscow, which...
Afghanistan will top the agenda when NATO member nations gather this week in Bucharest to discuss the state of the alliance. General Dan McNeil, commander of the alliance's 43,250 troops in Afghanistan, has lobbied for reinforcements to help battle the rising insurgency in the country's south. But commanders on the ground would also like a little more help from the Afghans on whose behalf they're fighting. "Frankly, defeating the Taliban is the least of our worries," says one. "They are not going to beat us. It's not them that are crippling the economy. What...
...France's formal commitment of an additional 1,000 ground troops to Afghanistan will come during next week's NATO summit in Romania. Those new troops are to join France's current contingent of 1,600. But while those currently in Afghanistan patrol the relatively calm area in and around Kabul, most or all of the new units are expected to be sent to the south of Afghanistan, where the reformed Taliban and their allies have strengthened. Indeed, deaths among Canadian combat personnel in the area have been so high that Ottawa had threatened to pull its military from Afghanistan...
...Especially since those claims are now being aired by Sarkozy's fellow conservatives - who have forced a parliamentary hearing on Sarkozy's planned troop deployment next week. In addition to concerns that those reinforcements won't tip the balance back to NATO's side - while sending Afghan forces a sign they can count on outside help indefinitely - some legislators bristle at Sarkozy's apparent responsiveness to American decrees. "This decision clearly looks to be an Atlanticist alignment on American positions, even though Washington's foreign policy is a total failure," fumed Jacques Myard, a conservative member of parliament's foreign...
...probably in anticipation of such complaints that Sarkozy conditioned the troop augmentation to NATO acceptance of a French plan he said will "allow the Afghan people and its legitimate government to build a peaceful future". Sarkozy isn't saying publicly what such a plan would involve, or how it might reverse the setbacks suffered by NATO. But its contents may well decide the fate of French involvement in Afghanistan...