NATO discusses Afghanistan withdrawl

CHICAGO: NATO leaders gathered in Chicago yesterday to chart a path out of Afghanistan as war-weary Western nations seek to ensure Afghanistan can hold Taleban at bay when foreign troops withdraw.
President Barack Obama hosts the summit in his hometown, Chicago, a day after leaders of major industrialized nations tackled Europe's debt crisis.
The shadow cast by fiscal pressures in Europe and elsewhere will follow leaders to the talks on Afghanistan.
The Obama administration, looking ahead to the November presidential election, is expected to emphasize a common alliance vision for gradually pulling most of the NATO force by the end of 2014. It will also highlight Afghanistan's strides toward taking charge of its own security.
In addition to the shared fiscal stress, the talks may be characterized by undercurrents of division between leaders in Washington, Brussels and in other nations, like France, who are more eager to go home.
France's new leader, Francois Hollande, repeated a pledge during his inaugural visit to Washington last week to pull "combat troops" from Afghanistan this year. He has said an extremely limited number of soldiers would remain to train Afghan forces and bring back equipment beyond 2012.
"This decision is an act of sovereignty and must be done in good coordination with our allies and partners," said Hollande. Yet Hollande has declined to define the details of his withdrawal, saying that was France's "business."
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking yesterday, said a key motivation for coughing up the funding is "at the end of the day it is less expensive to finance the Afghan security forces to do the combat than to deploy our own troops."
A last-minute addition to the list of leaders at the meeting is President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, whose western tribal areas provide shelter to militants attacking Karzai's government and NATO forces.
Zardari may encounter friction in interactions with NATO leaders who have been pressing Islamabad to reopen routes used to supply NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. Pakistan shut those routes in protest when US aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border in November.
It was unclear whether a deal reopening those roads would occur this weekend as US officials had hoped earlier in the week.
Though Obama had no plans to hold one-on-one talks with Zardari in Chicago, a meeting was set at the last minute with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday, suggesting a mutual effort to ease strains.
Meanwhile, a fourth man faced terrorism charges in a separate plot to toss Molotov cocktails during protests against the NATO summit in Chicago, police said yesterday.
The city was braced for a massive rally and march yesterday afternoon along with around a dozen other protest events as the leaders of more than 50 nations opened their meeting here.
The charges come a day after three men were charged in a plot to attack President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, police stations, banks and the mayor's home. Sebastian Senakiewicz, 24, of Chicago was charged with one count of "terrorism/false threat," Chicago police officer Robert Perez told AFP.
Fears that demonstrations could turn violent have put Chicago on edge, with some downtown businesses boarding up their windows and others telling office workers to ditch their suits and ties to avoid being hassled.
Police and protest organizers have vowed that there will be no repeat of the trouble that erupted at G20 summits in London and Toronto or the riots that scarred Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Several street protests held so far this week have been peaceful, and most of the 18 people already arrested were engaged in acts of civil disobedience, such as refusing to leave the building housing Obama's campaign headquarters.