Leading European Nato members were set to tell military commanders on Wednesday they cannot provide reinforcements to help quell an insurgency in southern Afghanistan, alliance sources said.
National defence chiefs agreed last weekend on the need to raise between 2,000 to 2,500 troops to help British, Dutch and Canadian troops locked in daily clashes with Taleban guerrillas.
But after consultations with their capitals this week, those same officials were returning empty-handed to a new round of talks at Nato's military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, despite growing US pressure to send troops and equipment.
The main European governments say their forces are already stretched with deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Ivory Coast, Congo and the Balkans.
"Nations are saying they are tapped out," said one alliance diplomat.
"Do not expect much today," said another Nato source who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of closed-door talks at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned after talks in Canada on Tuesday that Afghanistan "could come back to haunt us" if the West once again allowed it to become a failed state. "We left Afghanistan to its own devices," she said of a US decision to abandon the country after the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, ultimately allowing Taleban to take power and harbour the al Qaeda perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
GERMANS WON'T GO: The German Defence Ministry said on Tuesday it would not send troops to the south, noting its existing deployment of 2,900 soldiers in north Afghanistan already took it close to a limit of 3,000 set by parliament.
Spain, France and Italy already have contingents in western Afghanistan and the capital, Kabul, and are stretched after recent troop commitments to the expanded UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Turkey has ruled out sending any reinforcements.
The 6,000 British, Dutch and Canadian troops leading operations against the insurgents in the south have taken almost daily casualties in the past month. Nato puts the Taleban death toll at more than 500, a figure the Taleban disputes.
Nato's supreme commander, James Jones, acknowledged last week the alliance had underestimated the strength of Taleban resistance and called for added troops, helicopters and transport aircraft. He said he expected responses within days.
Jones insisted the call for reinforcements - including a 1,000-strong battalion of reserves - was not a sign of panic but an "insurance package" that would help speed Nato's progress on the ground. "We are not complacent but we are making progress. If we do not get the troops requested, this will not stop us," said Nato spokesman Mark Laity.
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