NATO to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan

[tocqueville]

29 minutes ago

KABUL (AFP) - NATO will send thousands more troops to Afghanistan, the 26-nation group's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said, boosting the total in the war-torn country to as high as 15,000.

The expansion of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) into the volatile southern part of the country "will of course lead to the arrival of certainly a few thousand extra NATO forces," he told reporters Thursday.

"I can't give you the exact numbers, but you may say it will be well over 10,000, between 13 and 14, 15,000," he said, and a NATO spokesman in Brussels said he was referring to eventual size of the expanded force.

The ISAF force has been in Afghanistan since late 2001, shortly after the toppling of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime, and came under NATO control in 2003.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051006/ts_afp/afghanistanattacksnato_051006101638