France, Germany and Spain rejected a U.S. call for the alliance to help it fight the Taliban-led insurgency in
Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appealed at a meeting in Berlin for more help once Sunday's crucial Afghan parliamentary elections are out of the way. But France and Spain insisted NATO's peacekeeping duties, mainly in the north and west but due to broaden, should remain separate from the 20,000-strong U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), focused in the more turbulent south and east. |