Dick Cheney Visits Afghanistan

By REUTERS

Filed at 6:37 a.m. ET

KABUL (Reuters) - Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Afghanistan on Thursday and met President Hamid Karzai ahead of a NATO summit where Washington will urge its allies to send more troops to the war-torn country.

NATO's Afghan mission is one of the toughest challenges faced by the 59-year-old alliance and has led to open differences among allies over strategy and troop levels.

Cheney said the mission of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan would be high on the agenda of the summit in Bucharest in early April.

"ISAF has made a tremendous difference in the country and America will ask our NATO allies for an even stronger commitment for the future," Cheney told a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he made an unannounced visit.

"All free nations have an interest in a secure, democratic Afghanistan," he said.

ISAF has some 43,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting Taliban militants, who have regrouped since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the hardline Islamist movement from power after the September 11, 2001 attacks and relaunched their insurgency two years ago.

U.S. British, Canadian and Dutch troops are engaged in the bulk of the fighting in southern and eastern Afghanistan, while other NATO allies, notably France and Germany, have so far resisted U.S. pressure to allow their soldiers to operate outside the relative safety of the north of the country.

"The United States and the other members of the coalition need to have a sufficient force here to be able to ensure security to deal with the threat that's been represented by continuing activities by radicals and extremists, the likes of the Taliban and al Qaeda," Cheney said.

The U.S. vice president's last visit to Afghanistan was in February 2007, when a suicide bomber killed 14 people, including one U.S. and one South Korean soldier, in an attack on Bagram Air Base while Cheney was there.

The Taliban aims to wear down the will of NATO countries to carry on the fight in Afghanistan and force a withdrawal of foreign troops that would hand them a strategic victory.

U.S. SUPPORT "UNSHAKEABLE"

Already cracks are appearing in support for the war. Canada, with 2,500 troops in southern Afghanistan, wants NATO allies to provide another 1,000 soldiers to reinforce its combat forces as a condition for keeping its troops in the country.

Ordinary Afghans are also growing increasingly frustrated with the presence of foreign troops, the slow pace of development, official corruption and the lack of security.

Cheney said the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan was "firm and unshakeable," but the goal was for the Afghan army and police to take a greater role in providing security as time goes on.

The Afghan army currently has around 70,000 troops, but the Afghan Defence Ministry say a much larger force is needed.

The Afghan army is relatively well-trained and has taken a much greater role in fighting the Taliban over the last year, but the police lag far behind, are poorly trained, notoriously corrupt and often flee in the face of Taliban attacks.

"The continuation of NATO in Afghanistan is very, very important," Karzai told the news conference alongside Cheney at the heavily guarded presidential palace. "As the Afghan National Army gets stronger, there will be less pressure and responsibility on the foreign security forces."

Karzai and Cheney were also to discuss steps the Afghan government needs to take on fighting corruption and narcotics.

The country's raging illicit opium industry is the main factor driving corruption, with the illegal crop accounting for as much as a third of the entire economy. Afghanistan last year produced 93 percent of the world's opium, which is processed to make heroin, and efforts to curb the crop have largely failed.

Karzai and Cheney were also due to talk about Afghan parliamentary and presidential elections next year and discuss Pakistan in the wake of elections there and how the neighbors can work together to fight the common Taliban threat, a senior U.S. administration official said.

Cheney will also meet U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Alex Richardson)