Obama To Seek NATO Help In Afghanistan
President Obama will present his new strategy for Afghanistan on Friday to NATO allies who are increasingly reluctant to commit more ground troops to the escalating war effort.
The two-day conference - co-hosted by the Rhine river cities of Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany - is the second of three major international meetings taking place in Europe this week. The U.S. president's meeting with European Union leaders in Prague on Sunday also will focus on economic issues.
Mr. Obama and the leaders of the G20 made headway Thursday on tackling the world's worst financial crisis since the 1930s, but the NATO summit may prove a larger diplomatic challenge for the U.S. leader.
Air Force One departed from Stansted airport Friday morning, thought a thick blanket of London fog made the massive aircraft hard to see. The president and First Lady had been scheduled to fly by helicopter from the American Ambassador's residence in London to Stansted, but the fog forced them onto the roads for the 90 minute drive.
The military alliance's annual summit this year coincides with NATO's 60th anniversary. While NATO leaders have emphasized that the meeting Friday and Saturday must be more than just a birthday celebration, no major breakthroughs are expected on key issues facing the alliance.
NATO's ability to successfully wage the deadlocked war in Afghanistan is seen as a crucial test of the alliance's power and relevance. Although European governments have already made clear they are unwilling to deploy significant new ground forces, they have been more enthusiastic about bolstering humanitarian and development assistance to the beleaguered government in Kabul.
CBS News correspondent Charles D'Agata reports that Mr. Obama will look to build on the European partnerships he made in London to convince countries to help.
In Washington, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that the United States would ask its allies for more civilian help, including significant assistance to Afghan government ministries.
"That aspect of moving forward together is really critical," Adm. Mike Mullen told NBC's "Today."
Even if he does not win the help he seeks, Mr. Obama may use the summit to build up personal ties with leaders whom he is meeting for the first time.
"The NATO summit will be an opportunity to exchange views, and, I hope, find agreement on a common way forward, taking into account the new U.S. effort including more support for Pakistan, a greater effort to strengthen the (Afghan) police, more coordinated aid and visible steps by Kabul to fight corruption," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer wrote in an editorial in the New York Times.
The NATO summit comes three days after an Afghan conference in the Netherlands which saw a rare face-to-face meeting of U.S. and Iranian diplomats.
CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reported that, although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited the Iranians to the conference, saying they had a vested interest in Afghan stability as one of the country's immediate neighbors, she may not have liked everything they had to say.
That conference also exposed some of the tension which has gathered between Afghanistan's leaders and the U.S. and other Western countries, reported Logan.
Despite assurances from both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Clinton that Washington and Kabul remain united in their fight against extremism, the Obama administration has been less vocal in its support for Karzai than the previous White House.
Other NATO countries - Canada in particular - have expressed concerns over corruption and said Karzai is making too many concessions to conservative Islamic factions in his own country to maintain power; a worrying trend, some say, back toward Taliban-type Islamic rules.
Keeping the Canadians, who have been a key partner to the U.S. in Afghanistan, onboard for the future (and growing) effort there, will also be a challenge facing Mr. Obama at the NATO summit.
Mending ties with Russia that have been strained over the alliance's eastward expansion and last summer's war between Russia and Georgia as well as welcoming two new members from the Balkans - Albania and Croatia, which joined NATO this week - are also high on the crowded agenda for NATO's 28 member nations.
The allies are expected to approve moves to normalize relations with Moscow, which were frozen following the Russo-Georgian war in August. Ties have improved since then, and Russia has allowed NATO nations to use its territory to supply their forces in Afghanistan after the main supply route through Pakistan came under repeated Taliban attacks. But Moscow also wants an end to Bush-era plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance, and to install a missile shield in eastern Europe.
The sites of the summit straddling the French-German border were swathed in police and security cordons as demonstrators from several countries poured in with a panoply of demands from pulling out of Afghanistan to building a new and more just world economic order. Up to 65,000 protesters may rally on both sides of the France-German border, authorities said.
The summit leaders will formally welcome France back into NATO's military wing after a 43-year absence, a largely symbolic move championed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
And they are expected to formally launch work on a new "strategic concept" for NATO - essentially an outline of it's purpose in the 21st century.