HEIDELBERG, Germany - Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday questioned the commitment of some NATO allies to winning in Afghanistan, saying the outcome is at "real risk" because some European nations are unwilling to provide enough troops and resources to the mission.
"In Afghanistan a handful of allies are paying the price and bearing the burdens," he told a conference of army leaders from 38 European nations organized by the chief of U.S. Army Europe.
"The failure to meet commitments puts the Afghan mission - and with it, the credibility of NATO - at real risk," he added in remarks that were notably critical of European governments that have been close security, political and economic partners of the United States for more than five decades.
He also said restrictions that some allies put on how and where their troops can operate in Afghanistan have unfairly burdened other coalition partners and "done real harm" to the overall war effort.
The U.S. has 26,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the non-U.S. total is 23,000. For the past year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has had overall command of the forces, other than 13,000 U.S. troops doing counterterrorism missions. In that period, violenceled by the Taliban has increased, although Gates said NATO should take credit for blunting a spring offensive by the Taliban, especially in the south.
Gates spoke hours after leaving a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where U.S.-led efforts to provide sufficient troops for the Afghanistan mission was a central topic.
His audience in Heidelberg included army chiefs from most NATO countries, plus their counterparts from other European nations. For the first time an American secretary of defense had addressed the group, known as the Conference of European Armies. It also was the first time since the annual gatherings began in 1991 that reporters were allowed to cover part of the proceedings.
Gates said before the NATO session that the allies' efforts had not satisfied him. In Heidelberg he told the army chiefs that the stakes in Afghanistan are great.
"If an alliance of the world's greatest democracies cannot summon the will to get the job done in a mission that we agree is morally just and vital to our security," he told the European army generals, "then our citizens may begin to question both the worth of the mission and the utility of the 60-year-old trans-Atlantic security project itself," referring to NATO, created in 1949.
He cited one example that has particularly irritated Pentagon officials: the allies' failure to provide a small number of helicopters to perform a mission deemed essential by the overall commander in Afghanistan. In the meantime, the U.S. military has bridged that gap, though reluctantly.
"Consider that earlier this year the U.S. extended its aviation bridging force in Afghanistan - in Kandahar - because the mightiest and wealthiest military alliance in the history of the world was unable to produce 16 helicopters needed by the ISAF commander - 16," Gates said. He used the short term for the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led group that commands coalition forces.
Gates also said the Bush administration has gone almost asfar as it will in accommodating Russian concerns about a U.S. plan to extend a missile defense system into Europe.
"I think we've gone pretty far," he told reporters on the return flight to Washington.
"I think we've leaned about as far forward as we can," he said. "We've offered a lot. And my view is, now I want to see some movement on their part."
U.S. offers include an arrangement that would permit Russian officials to be present at major U.S. missile defense sites to monitor their activities. That possibly could mean a Russian presence at proposed U.S. sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Moscow strongly objects to the European sites, which they argue are designed for an Iranian missile threat that does not exist.
Information for this article was contributed by Paul Ames of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 10/26/2007