Obama Seeks NATO Help On Afghanistan
Courting Europe with an American-style campaign, President Barack Obama on Friday talked up his plans - popular here - to eliminate nuclear weapons, close the Guantanamo Bay prison and tackle global warming.
In return, he's hoping for European popular support in the anti-terror fight in Afghanistan.
Obama seems likely to win fresh commitments at Saturday's 60th anniversary NATO summit. He can expect more civilian aid and small troop increases for training Afghan forces and providing security for upcoming elections.
But the European public has no stomach for more intense military involvement by their nations. So Obama is unlikely to get additional help in the way of either major combat troops or new deployments to the toughest areas of the fighting in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Obama and his aides sought ahead of time to frame that outcome in the best possible light.
"It's not just a matter of more resources, it's a matter of more effectively using the resources we have," Obama said.
That comment came in the midst of a remarkable event he created at a basketball arena in Strasbourg, a campaign-style "town hall" in which he fielded questions from young French and German men and women.
President Obama is fighting a cold, but he continues to keep an ambitious schedule, reports CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata. He started his European tour in London, and will wrapping up his trip in Turkey next week.
Thousands are cheering the Obama at every stop, but there are also many protestors - usually kept far way from the president, D'Agata reports.
Police in France fired tear gas at several hundred demonstrators in Strasbourg. This weekend up to 40,000 protestors are expected at the NATO summit.
The two-day conference - co-hosted by the Rhine river cities of Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany - is the second of three major international meetings taking place in Europe this week. The U.S. president's meeting with European Union leaders in Prague on Sunday also will focus on economic issues.World Watch Blog: U.S. Seeks Non-Military Aid From NATO
Mr. Obama and the leaders of the G20 made headway Thursday on tackling the world's worst financial crisis since the 1930s, but the NATO summit may prove a larger diplomatic challenge for the U.S. leader.
Mending ties with Russia that have been strained over the alliance's eastward expansion and last summer's war between Russia and Georgia as well as welcoming two new members from the Balkans - Albania and Croatia, which joined NATO this week - are also high on the crowded agenda for NATO's 28 member nations.
Separately, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that securing new commitments from allies would neither begin nor end with the NATO meetings, noting that nations need more time to digest Obama's week-old revamped Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. "The NATO summit is not a pledging conference," she told reporters.
| Map: Obama's Overseas Trip A day-by-day guide to one of the most closely watched presidential trips in recent memory. |
NATO's ability to succeed in Afghanistan will be seen as a crucial test of the alliance's power and relevance.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged after talks with Obama that his nation would send more police trainers and civilian aid.
"We totally endorse and support America's new strategy in Afghanistan," Sarkozy told a joint news conference.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel also met with Obama and said Germany wanted to bear its share of the responsibility in Afghanistan. She offered no specifics about Germany's plans for Afghanistan, where it already has 3,800 troops, mostly in the calmer north.
Backing from Sarkozy and Merkel is vitally important for Obama, who will formally present his new strategy to the heads of government of NATO's 28 member states at a dinner on Friday in the German resort town of Baden-Baden.
At the news conference with Sarkozy, Obama described NATO as "the most successful alliance in modern history," and said Washington wanted to see Europe develop its military capabilities.
But Obama also encouraged a skeptical Europe to support his revamped strategy for rooting out terrorism suspects in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and said Europe should not expect America to send combat troops by itself.
"This is a joint problem," Obama said on the cusp of the NATO summit. "And it requires a joint effort."
Obama offered strong praise for France's "outstanding leadership" in Afghanistan, where it has 6,100 troops.
British officials traveling to the summit with Prime Minister Gordon Brown told reporters aboard his plane that Brown will offer to send more troops to Afghanistan but that depended upon other NATO members being prepared to send additional forces, Britain's Press Association reported. Officials said the number would likely be in the "mid to high hundreds." Britain has 8,000 troops in Afghanistan.
Spain said ahead of the summit that it will increase the number of soldiers it has in Afghanistan with a small contingent to help train Afghan army officers. Spain has 778 troops as part of the 55,000-strong NATO presence.
Belgium said it will add some 65 soldiers to the force of 500 it already has in Afghanistan, and will send two more F-16 jet fighters, bringing the total number it has sent to six. Belgium will also double its financial aid to an annual $14.5 million over the next two years.
Obama's national security adviser, retired Gen. James Jones, said Obama's new approach to Afghanistan, which calls for increasing U.S. troops by 21,000, narrowing the mission on uprooting terrorist safe havens and broadening the focus to include Pakistan, would inspire fresh involvement. "I think there's a new mood," Jones said.
Just hours before the summit was to start over dinner in the German town of Baden-Baden, Mr. Obama continued his lobbying.
He wowed a 4,000-strong crowd of French and German citizens at the arena in Strasbourg. He also laid the flattery on thick with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and thicker with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Obama praised Sarkozy as "courageous on so many fronts, it's hard to keep up" and for displaying "initiative, imagination, creativity" in tackling difficult problems.
Sarkozy said Obama would visit France again in June, to mark the anniversary of the 1944 D-Day invasion by allied forces at Normandy.
At the town hall, Obama explicitly asked Europe to step up to a greater extent in Afghanistan, saying Europeans should recognize that the threat from extremists there and in neighboring Pakistan endangers them as much - even more, he said - as it does Americans.
"It is important for Europe to understand that even though I'm now president and George Bush is no longer president, al Qaeda is still a threat, and that we cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be OK," he said. "This is a joint problem. And it requires a joint effort."
After concluding the NATO gathering, Obama will fly to Prague for yet another summit on Sunday, this one between the United States and the European Union. The Czech Republic holds the rotating EU presidency. The president then will stop in Turkey for two days.
The NATO summit comes three days after an Afghan conference in the Netherlands which saw a rare face-to-face meeting of U.S. and Iranian diplomats.
CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reported that, although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited the Iranians to the conference, saying they had a vested interest in Afghan stability as one of the country's immediate neighbors, she may not have liked everything they had to say.
That conference also exposed some of the tension which has gathered between Afghanistan's leaders and the U.S. and other Western countries, reported Logan.
Despite assurances from both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Clinton that Washington and Kabul remain united in their fight against extremism, the Obama administration has been less vocal in its support for Karzai than the previous White House.
Other NATO countries - Canada in particular - have expressed concerns over corruption and said Karzai is making too many concessions to conservative Islamic factions in his own country to maintain power; a worrying trend, some say, back toward Taliban-type Islamic rules.
Back home, some Republicans tried to dent the impact of the Obama adulation in Europe, criticizing him for making no plans to visit wounded U.S. troops at an American military hospital just a short distance away in Landstuhl, Germany.
Though the town hall was billed as a way to escape the presidential bubble by interacting with young foreigners, "not only to speak to you but to hear from you," Obama did most of the talking - delivering a 25-minute introductory speech and giving long answers to the five questions he took afterward.
In urging greater contributions from Europe, Obama attempted to both seduce and scold.
He touched on some of the more important issues for Europeans in relations with the U.S., drawing hearty applause for several points.
In a symbolic gesture, Sarkozy announced France would accept one prisoner from the detention center for suspected terrorists. "We can't condemn the United States to have this camp and then simply wash our hands of the whole business when they close it down," Sarkozy said. Spain and Portugal have already said they could accept prisoners, while Germany and many others remain tightlipped about whether they will accept prisoners who are not citizens of their nations.
Obama acknowledged "doubt about this war in Europe," and he thanked European nations for the contributions they already have made in Afghanistan. But he said the status quo isn't enough.
"Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone," Obama said.
Asked, at Merkel's side, if Germany should do more, he said, "We do expect that all NATO partners are going to contribute. They have thus far, but the progress in some cases has been uneven."
Air Force One departed from Stansted airport Friday morning through a thick blanket of London fog for the short flight to Strasbourg. Breakfast was served during the flight: French toast. One U.S. pool reporter recalled a flight during President George W. Bush's leadership when "Freedom toast" was featured on the Air Force One breakfast menu.
Upon arrival, the First Couple was whisked to the summit venue and greeted by a mob of adoring French citizens shouting for a handshake, and then by Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni.
The couples greeted each other warmly and then the presidents stood to listen to a French band play the American National Anthem.