Blair Tells Nato: Send More Troops to Afghanistan

Tony Blair today called on Nato members to contribute more troops to Afghanistan.

The prime minister's appeal came as a difficult campaign to take control of two insurgent-held districts approached its second week.

"Nato is looking at what further requirements there are and ... Nato countries have got a duty to respond to that," Mr Blair said. "It is important that the whole of Nato regards this as their responsibility."

The prime minister was speaking after Washington's ambassador to Nato today urged other members of the military alliance to send forces to help stabilise the country.

"What we are looking to do is to put more forces in so that we can turn the tide faster," Victoria Nuland told BBC radio. "The issue here ... is the fighting capability and the fighting willingness of all allies.

"The US, the UK, Canada, the Dutch, have been in the tough, pointy end of this fight, and more allies need to be willing to be ... in the fighting."

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, underlined the importance of tackling the insurgency, saying "we owe it to the people of Afghanistan to help them finish the job".

"An Afghanistan that does not complete its democratic evolution and become a stable, terror-fighting state is going to come back to haunt us," she said at a news conference with the Canadian foreign minister, Peter MacKay.

"It will come back to haunt our successors and their successors."

Nato governments are meeting in Belgium today to address shortfalls in troop levels in Afghanistan.

The force is currently running at 85% of capacity, and military chiefs have called for more soldiers to tackle an insurgency in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

However, member governments with few or no troops in the troubled provinces argue they are already over-committed in other peacekeeping operations and do not want to be drawn into the bloody battle.

Italy and France are both sending troops to the Unifil peacekeeping force in Lebanon, while Germany already has 2,600 troops stationed in the relatively calm north of Afghanistan.

Twenty-six troops, including 14 British soldiers killed when their Nimrod reconnaissance plane crashed in Kandahar province earlier this month, have died in southern Afghanistan over the past month.

In total, more than 2,000 people have died in fighting in the country in the past year.

Around 20,000 troops from the Afghan army and the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force are currently in the country. Some 8,000 of those are Isaf soldiers, and Britain is currently contributing just over 4,000 soldiers to the force.

Over the past fortnight, Isaf troops have been waging a bitter battle in Kandahar in which hundreds of Taliban guerrillas are reported to have been killed.