Nato said on Friday a review of its policies in Afghanistan had led to a fall in civilian casualties caused by its troops and blamed Taliban insurgents for using ordinary Afghans as human shields.
Nato defence ministers agreed its 40,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would do everything it could to stem casualties the West fears are sapping public support for the international presence in Afghanistan.
But they signalled no major change in military strategy, which has made extensive use of air power to get troops out of tight spots, and said the main change had been an effort to tighten co-ordination with other international and Afghan forces.
"Nato-ISAF doesn't indiscriminately kill people - the Taliban does," Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said after a meeting of the 37 countries that contribute to the ISAF force.
"Put the blame where it lies - they are using civilians as shields. We are not in the same moral category," he told a joint news conference with Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak.
A Nato spokesman said ISAF procedures had been tightened over the past 12 months and noted that internal Nato statistics "show in the past few months a clear decline in civilian casualties caused by ISAF". He said the data was classified and declined to give more details.
US forces on Tuesday mistakenly killed seven policemen in an air strike in the east of Afghanistan, and the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that Western forces must do more to prevent civilian casualties when bombing insurgents. Germany in particular has raised concerns over dozens of civilian deaths in recent months. While some result from ISAF action, others have stemmed from the presence of a separate US-led coalition and the Afghan army.
Wardak, whose government has criticised Western forces as not doing enough to prevent casualties, noted the review of ISAF procedures as evidence that Nato was "very sensitive" to the issue but added: "Sometimes in a war it is ... difficult."
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