US President George W Bush pushed Nato on Tuesday to "finish the fight" against extremists in Afghanistan and urged Russia to join a planned US missile shield he said was urgently needed to thwart a possible threat from Iran.
"If we were to let up the pressure, the extremists would re-establish safe havens across the country, and use them to terrorize the Afghan people and threaten our own," he said in remarks prepared for delivery at a Nato summit on Wednesday.
In excerpts made public by the White House, Bush said the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation had outlived the Soviet menace it was created to blunt and must now act as "an expeditionary alliance" around the world.
"Our alliance must maintain its resolve and finish the fight in Afghanistan," he said, as Washington pressed fellow alliance members to step up their troop and money commitments to stabilise and rebuild the strife-torn country.
"Just two weeks ago, Osama bin Laden issued an audio recording in which he threatened Europe with new attacks. We need to take the words of the enemy seriously. The terrorist threat is real, it is deadly, and defeating this enemy must be the top priority of the Nato alliance," he said.
Looking to weekend talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has firmly opposed Washington’s planned missile defence system, the US president warned: "The need for missile defence in Europe is real and it is urgent."
Bush said Washington was working on defences against short-, medium-, and long-range missile strikes and declared: "As we do, we are inviting Russia to join us in this cooperative effort to defend Russia, Europe, and the United States against an emerging threat that could affect us all."
Bush said Iranian missiles had the range to hit Israel and Turkey today, that Tehran sought missiles that could reach Romania someday, and may at some point in the future be able to hit the United States or all of Europe.
The US president said he would tell Putin "that the missile defence capabilities we are developing are not designed to defend against Russia just as the new Nato we are building is not designed to defend against Russia. The Cold War is over.
"Russia is not our enemy. We are working toward a new security relationship with Russia whose foundation does not rest on the prospect of mutual annihilation," said Bush. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has warned against Afghanistan falling into the hands of the Taliban or al-Qaeda and said in this week Nato’s summit meeting in Rumania the leaders will discuss means of expanding the coalition forces strength in the south-west Asian country.
Addressing his monthly news conference at his Downing Street office Tuesday afternoon, the British premier called for more burden-sharing among the 40 coalition countries who have contributed their forces in Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan is the front-line against the Taliban. If Afghanistan falls to Taliban, it will create vulnerability for the whole of the rest of the world and so it is imperative that we must progress in the country."
NATO’s fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan is "crucial" for world security, Romanian President Traian Basescu said on Tuesday, on the eve of an alliance summit in Bucharest.
"Nato has understood that European security cannot be defined in a strictly geographical sense," he said, as he opened the Bucharest Conference, organised by the German Marshall Fund think-tank on the sidelines of the NATO summit.
"Nato’s success in Afghanistan is crucial for the future of that country, for the war that we are fighting against terrorism and so for our own security," he said. He said the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had made "notable progress in its engagement in Afghanistan, but we have to ensure that this progress is not reversed."
He also urged the international community to rally behind Afghanistan’s cause — one of the key aims of the summit, which runs from Wednesday to Friday, and is to include Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
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