NATO forces in that region—mostly U.S., British, Canadian, and Dutch troops—have engaged in sharp clashes with supporters of the former Taliban regime, particularly in recent months.

At the meeting, NATO powers also agreed to offer Serbia partnership status—a step toward full membership—along with Bosnia and Montenegro. The three areas are part of former Yugoslavia. Washington hopes the offer will smooth the way for a compromise on the status of the Serbian province of Kosova, a majority-Albanian region that has been occupied by NATO troops since 1999.

In July NATO took over command from Washington of combat operations in southern Afghanistan. The 32,000 NATO troops in that country, however, have been operating under geographical and operational limits set by member governments. At the Riga summit Washington and London sought to win agreement to lift all these restraints.

In the end, NATO officials agreed to eliminate a number of restrictions to ease the movement of troops and equipment across different parts of Afghanistan.

NATO secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he had commitments from leaders of all 26 NATO members that the remaining restrictions would be waived in emergency cases. He said an emergency would be defined by the commander of the NATO force.

In response, Spain's prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, countered that his government would not yet lift any of the restrictions and that emergency use of its troops would be decided by the Spanish command. Italian prime minister Romano Prodi said Rome, Paris, and Berlin were taking the same stance. French president Jacques Chirac said his government would consider sending its troops outside Kabul case by case.

“But NATO officials said that the political signal sent by the leaders at the summit would make it near impossible for national capitals in the future to resist emergency calls by commanders in the field,” the Financial Times reported November 30.

Washington also made progress in further integrating NATO into its broader "global war on terror." Despite earlier reluctance by some imperialist governments to project NATO military interventions in other parts of the world, the military alliance issued a "comprehensive political guidance" document at the Riga summit stating that NATO may have to take future action against “terrorism” and “the spread of weapons of mass destruction” around the world in the coming years.  
 
Serbian ‘partnership’ in NATO
The NATO summit also agreed to begin talks with the Serbian government on granting it partnership status. Until now, U.S. and NATO officials had blocked admission of Belgrade because of its refusal to meet their demands that it turn over two former Bosnian Serb chauvinist leaders, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, whom an imperialist tribunal in The Hague has charged with “war crimes.”

The move on Serbia’s role in NATO is part of the imperialist efforts to gain more influence in the Balkans. In 1999 U.S. and other NATO forces waged a 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, posing as defenders of ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosova who were under attack by Serbian chauvinist forces backed by Belgrade. Kosova was then put under United Nations control, enforced by 50,000 troops, mostly under NATO command.

The UN Security Council is expected to decide on the status of Kosova in the coming months. Albanians in that region have continued to demand independence.

Serbian president Boris Tadic has advocated some form of autonomy for Kosova, while the country’s foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic, recently called for a compromise “between respecting Serbia’s territorial integrity and accommodating the demands by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians for full independence,” the Associated Press reported December 2.

Tadic and Draskovic have sought closer ties to NATO after years of isolation imposed on Serbia by the imperialist powers. In the campaign for the January 21 parliamentary elections in Serbia, right-wing chauvinist parties have vowed to resist any concessions on Kosova’s status.

The debate over Kosova has heightened tensions with the Russian government of President Vladimir Putin. Moscow, which has sought to maintain its close ties with Belgrade, has warned that any change in Kosova’s status could set a precedent for pro-Russian regions in Moldova, Georgia, and elsewhere to pursue their independence, the International Herald Tribune reported.
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. rulers debate how best to establish stable regime in Iraq
U.S. out of Iraq, Afghanistan now!  
 
 
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