Nato puts on brave front

Alliance vows no fast exit from unpopular war in Afghanistan

CHICAGO: Nato allies declared the end of a long and unpopular Afghanistan war is in sight even as they struggled to hold their fighting force together as France’s new president announced plans to pull troops out early.

The fate of the war is both the centre of this two-day Nato summit that opened here on Sunday, and a topic no one is celebrating as a mission accomplished.

The alliance already has one foot out the Afghanistan door, with the Europeans pinching pennies in a debt crisis and President Barack Obama with an ear attuned to the politics of an economy-driven presidential election year.

Still, some cautioned against following France’s example while others played down stresses in the fighting alliance.

“There will be no rush for the exits,” Natosecretary-generalanders Fogh Rasmussen said. “Our goal, our strategy, our timetable remain unchanged.”

The military alliance is pledged to remain in Afghanistan into 2014, but will seal plans during the summit to shift foreign forces off the front lines a year faster than once planned.

Afghan forces will take the lead throughout the nation next year, instead of in 2014, despite uneven performance under US and other outside tutelage so far. The shift is in large part a response to plummeting public support for the war in Europe and the United States, contributors of most of the 130,000 foreign troops now fighting the Taliban.

A majority of Americans now say the war is unwinnable or not worth continuing.

Obama, who was hosting the summit in his hometown and the city where his re-election operation hums, spoke of a post-2014 world when “the Afghan war as we understand it is over”. — AP