Allies support U.S.-led buildup in Afghanistan

U.S. President Barack Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan earned quick support from NATO, which pledged its partners would also make a "substantial increase" in troops.

"As the U.S. increases its commitment, I am confident that the other Allies, as well as our Partners in the mission, will also make a substantial increase in their contribution," said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "Taken together, the new force contributions from across the Alliance, as well as the new approach agreed by all the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) countries, will help create a new momentum in the mission in 2010."

Rasmussen called Obama's decision to send an additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan "a broader political strategy for success."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France called on "all countries that want to help the Afghan people to adhere to it," saying its nearly 4,000 personnel there were focused on stabilizing the Kapisa-Surobi province and training Afghan security forces.

Sarkozy said a meeting of NATO ministers this week and an international conference on Afghanistan in London next month will "underscore the international community's unity."

The January 28 conference in London will tackle the transfer of provinces and districts to Afghan control, civilian coordination, Afghan security and international aid, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement.

"Britain will continue to play its full part in persuading other countries to offer troops to the Afghanistan campaign," Brown said.

In his speech, Obama said it was in the "vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan" next year and that a drawdown would occur beginning in July 2011.

About 68,000 U.S. troops already are in Afghanistan, bolstered by around 50,000 troops from 42 nations, including all 28 NATO members.

The nine-year war came on the heels of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al Qaeda, which had been given safe haven in Afghanistan by the Taliban government. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks on New York and Washington. Since being overthrown in 2001, the Taliban have been trying to regain strength in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan.

Human Rights Watch said Obama's plan needed to strengthen civilian protection with a "clear strategy for combating corruption, removing warlords and holding rights violators accountable."

The human rights organization called the U.S. emphasis on rule of law in Afghanistan "long overdue" but said sufficient training of Afghan security was needed to "ensure basic human rights protections."

The U.S. State Department said it was tripling the number of civilian staff deployed to Afghanistan and plans to have 974 staff members there by early next year.

Experts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are embedded with the U.S. military, said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday in an address to the Business Executives for National Security Gala in New York. In addition, "rule of law" experts are working to extend a system of justice "so that the Taliban would not offer the only form of justice in Afghanistan," she added.

In his speech, Obama emphasized that the U.S. troop commitment in Afghanistan was not open-ended, saying, "the nation that I am most interested in building is our own."