Disagreements over Nato’s mission in Afghanistan intensified today as the US defense secretary, Robert Gates, criticized some countries for not providing troops prepared to "fight and die" against the Taliban.
Speaking before leaving the US for a two-day Nato summit in Lithuania, Gates said: "I think that it puts a cloud over the future of the alliance if this is to endure and perhaps even get worse."
After meeting his counterparts from Nato countries in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, Gates said he was disappointed with the level of contributions from some member states but rejected the idea that there was a crisis or "a risk of failure" in Afghanistan.
Britain and America have called on countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain to redeploy troops to southern Afghanistan, where there have been fierce clashes with resurgent Taliban militants.
Gates said he had written to every alliance defense minister asking them to contribute more troops and equipment, but had received no replies.
Only the Canadians, British, Australians, Dutch and Danes "are really out there on the line and fighting", he said.
Gates expressed concern that Nato could become a "two-tiered alliance" with "some allies willing to fight and die to protect people’s security, and others who are not".
The pointed comments were rejected by the Nato secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who said Gates should to keep appeals for troop reinforcements private.
"I do not see a two-tier alliance. There is one alliance," he told Reuters.
Several countries whose troops have endured heavy fighting in Afghanistan back Gates. Reuters reported the Canadian defense minister, Peter Mackay, as saying: "We want to see more of a one-for-all approach, including more burden-sharing in the south."
His Dutch counterpart, Eimert Van Middelkoop, said Gates was "within his rights" to air his concerns.
The increasingly acrimonious row within Nato came as the foreign secretary, David Miliband, and the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, visited Afghanistan to witness the deteriorating situation.
In an unannounced visit, they arrived in the capital, Kabul, before flying to the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south to see the front lines of the fight against Afghan insurgents.
Rice said it was unfair to say Nato and the Afghan government were not improving security.
"If you look at the Afghanistan of 2001 and the Afghanistan of now, there is a remarkable difference for the better," she said.
"Can we all expect the security situation will still be difficult ? Yes, because Afghanistan has determined enemies who laid waste to this country over a period of a decade."
Speaking alongside Rice at a press conference, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, rejected suggestions his country was in danger of becoming a failed state.
"Afghanistan, if given more attention, would be very, very glad and thankful but it is not right that Afghanistan has been forgotten," he said.
· A suicide car bomb slightly wounded three Nato soldiers today in eastern Afghanistan.