The Dutch government has summoned the US ambassador here to explain comments from US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who criticised Nato forces in southern Afghanistan in a report on Wednesday.
Gates told the Los Angeles Times newspaper that international troops deployed in the south - mainly from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands - were not properly trained to fight an insurgency. "We do not recognise ourselves in the image conjured" by Gates, Dutch Defence Secretary Eimert van Middelkoop told reporters. He argued that Dutch troops had acted with experience and professionalism.
At present, nearly 1,665 Dutch soldiers are deployed in Uruzgan in southern Afghanistan a Nico Geerts, also criticised Gates's comments in an interview with Netherlands public radio, saying Dutch soldiers were "doing an excellent job".
The remarks by Gates come just after the US administration decided to send 3,200 more marines to Afghanistan, as Nato allies struggle to provide an extra 7,500 troops requested by commanders on the ground. The commanders, backed by the United States, have regularly called for extra troops and equipment, even though the force the alliance leads there grew from around 33,000 in January 2007 to some 42,000 in December.
"I'm worried we have some military forces that don't know how to do counter-insurgency operations," Gates told the Los Angeles Times. "Most of the European forces, Nato forces, are not trained in counter-insurgency."
Nato is engaged in its most ambitious mission yet trying to spread the rule of President Hamid Karzai's weak central government into more lawless parts of Afghanistan. But ISAF forces have struggled to defeat the insurgency, particularly in the south near the mountainous border with Pakistan.
Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a Dutchman, also defended allied troops fighting the Taliban-led insurgency following Gates's criticism, saying he had "the greatest respect for what the allies are doing in the west, the north, the east and the south." Some 14 Dutch soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, either accidentally or in combat.
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