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 A reversal of France's refusal to deploy combat units to the southern front-lines would ease tensions within NATO. A rift has emerged in the alliance between nations such as the United States, Canada and Britain, who have troops in the south, and those like France, Germany and Italy, whose units operate in the relative safety of north and west Afghanistan.
However, French officials cautioned that it was unlikely Paris would provide all the troops Canada is seeking and said a decision on whether to deploy was unlikely before April, when NATO leaders meet for a summit in Bucharest, Romania.
While NATO defense ministers resumed talks in Lithuania, Canadian diplomats said the delegation heading to Paris would lay out details of what Ottawa needs in Kandahar.
The lack of support from key European allies in southern Afghanistan has provoked stark warnings this week from the United States about the future of alliance unity and prompted an ultimatum from Canada.
Ottawa said it would withdraw its 2,500 troops from their key role in the 43,000-strong NATO force next year unless it got reinforcements. Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay said Ottawa wants an offer of help by the April summit in Bucharest.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin on Thursday said France would help Canada, but declined to give details. He suggested President Nicolas Sarkozy could announce a strengthening of the French role in Afghanistan with a redeployment of the 1,500 French troops that are mostly in Kabul area.
"My message to the Canadian public is 'be a bit patient,'" Morin said when asked if France would help in the south. However, he added that a media report that Sarkozy was considering the deployment of 700 paratroopers to the south was premature.
"In the framework of this new policy in favor of Afghanistan, what we are studying are several options," he told reporters. "But announcing figures like that is really going too fast."
France, along with Germany, Italy, Spain and Turkey, has so far refused to deploy significant numbers of combat troops in southern Afghanistan, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency. Although none of the European holdouts has publicly announced a change in its position at the NATO meeting, diplomats were hopeful that France would answer the Canadian appeal.
If Sarkozy were to agree to deploy to the south, it would be a significant shift from the policy of his predecessor Jacques Chirac and underscore the new president's stated aim of improving relations with the United States. Under Sarkozy, France is also considering a full return to NATO's integrated military command, from which President Charles de Gaulle withdrew in the 1960s.
Canadian officials said Canada would likely have talks with other allies, although MacKay acknowledged that not all nations had the military capacity to maintain 1,000 troops in the tough Kandahar battlefields.
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 Many European governments are under public pressure not to send troops to the Afghan front-lines. Some think it better to focus on reconstruction in the more stable areas rather than pursuing the insurgents. Others say their militaries are stretched elsewhere.
Germany in particular has bristled at recent U.S. criticism, insisting its 3,300 troops in Afghanistan are doing important work supporting reconstruction in the relatively stable north.
"If we constantly rush back and forth between the different regions in Afghanistan, I think that also would be a difficult thing," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Berlin Thursday. "This deployment is not easy and that everyone who is active in this operation is doing his best to build up Afghanistan's overall structure."
A senior German official on Friday dismissing the idea that his and other European countries are "quitters."
"We already have more than 20 dead to mourn from this work, so it isn't so very safe," Gernot Erler, a deputy foreign minister, said on the Inforadio channel. "It simply is not true that some are doing the hard work and the others are quitters, to put it drastically."
Despite the difficulties raising forces, NATO insisted they were gaining ground in the battle against the Taliban and efforts to promote reconstruction in Afghanistan, rejecting the findings of a series of recent high-profile reports.
"Despite some gloomy headlines, there is clear progress," alliance Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said, pointing to military successes against the Taliban and improvements to the country's economy, schools and health care.
With Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak joining the NATO meeting Friday, de Hoop Scheffer stressed the need for the authorities in Kabul to fight corruption, build up a viable police force and take on opium producers.
"Governance must visibly improve, so the Afghan people have trust in their leaders," de Hoop Scheffer said.
He appealed to the United Nations and the European Union -- which also attended the meeting
-- to match NATO's military effort with increased backing for reconstruction.
[Associated
Press; By PAUL AMES]
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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