Gates links war in Iraq to Afghanistan shortage

MUNICH, Germany (AP) — Lingering anger in Europe over the U.S. invasion of Iraq explains why some allies are reluctant to heed U.S. calls for more combat troops in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday. It was his first public acknowledgment of such a link to the Iraq war.

Gates said he would attempt in a speech here Sunday at an international security conference to decouple perceptions of the Iraq war, in which NATO has no fighting role, from views of Afghanistan, where NATO is in charge of the fighting but has fallen short on commanders’ requests for more troops.

On a flight to Munich from Vilnius, Lithuania, where he attended two days of NATO talks dominated by Afghanistan, Gates associated Iraq with what lay behind Europe’s general skepticism about fighting in Afghanistan.

“I think they combine the two,” he added. “Many of them I think have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan and don’t understand the very different — for them — very different kind of threat” posed by al-Qaida in Afghanistan, as opposed to the militant group in Iraq that goes by the same name and is thought to be led by foreign terrorists linked to al-Qaida.

Germany, which is hosting the Munich conference and which has refused Gates’ explicit appeals to send combat forces to southern Afghanistan, and France were among the most vocal opponents of the Iraq invasion before the war. Britain has been the most supportive, and it has the second-largest number of troops in Afghanistan.

Despite earlier refusals, France now is considering sending troops to join the fight against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan after Canada’s appeal for 1,000 extra forces to support its beleaguered force in volatile Kandahar province. French officials cautioned that it was unlikely Paris would provide all the troops Canada is seeking and said a decision was unlikely before April.