NATO members failed to offer any extra troops on Wednesday to fight resurgent Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan and it could be weeks before reinforcements are committed, an alliance spokesman said.
"No formal offers were made at the table," spokesman James Appathurai told reporters after talks among NATO national defence chiefs at alliance military headquarters in Belgium.
He said there had been "positive indications" from some allies that they might consider providing extra forces to help British, Dutch and Canadian troops locked in daily clashes with Taliban guerrillas, but did not provide further details.
In Canada, CBC television said Ottawa was about to send an additional 120 troops to the southern Kandahar region to boost the country's 2,300-soldier mission there. A Defence Ministry spokeswoman said no formal decision had yet been taken.
NATO's top commander of operations, James Jones, said last week he wanted up to 2,500 extra troops, plus additional helicopters and transport aircraft to help combat a fiercer than expected Taliban insurgency in the south.
Appathurai acknowledged it could take until NATO defence ministers meet on Sept. 28-29 in Slovenia to finalise offers, and that any actual deployment could have to wait until October.
He said the reinforcements would boost NATO's mobility but insisted they were not needed for the success of the continuing offensive against Taliban fighters in the Kandahar region.
"Operation Medusa is going well and achieving its operational objective," he said, adding NATO had gained command of around two-thirds of the territory covered in the operation.
NATO nations currently have around 18,500 troops in Afghanistan with other non-NATO countries contributing a further 1,500 to its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned yesterday that Afghanistan "could come back to haunt us" if the West once again allowed it to become a failed state.
"We left Afghanistan to its own devices," she said of a US decision to abandon the country after the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, ultimately allowing hardline Taliban Islamists to take power and harbour the al Qaeda perpetrators of the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States.
But the main European governments have indicated their forces are already stretched with deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Ivory Coast, Congo and the Balkans.
"Nations are saying they are tapped out," one alliance diplomat, who requested anonymity, said ahead of the talks.
The German Defence Ministry yesterday ruled out sending troops to the south, noting its existing deployment of 2,900 soldiers in north Afghanistan already took it close to a limit of 3,000 set by parliament.