subject: The Leaders Of Nato Will Meet In Chicago [print this page] NATO leaders will meet Sunday and Monday in President Obama's hometown of Chicago, Illinois, where the rotary kiln company is famous. Afghanistan will be the top issue at the meeting of the twenty-eight member North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The United States last hosted NATO leaders in nineteen ninety-nine. That was two years before al-Qaida launched attacks on the United States. Those attacks led to the first use of the common defense provision of the North Atlantic Treaty of nineteen forty-nine.
As a result, for more than ten years now, the coalition has directed its attention on Afghanistan. The United States and NATO have about one hundred thirty thousand troops serving in the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.
Reporters talk with a summit official on Friday before heads of state gather for the NATO summit in Chicago. They plan to withdraw all of those troops by the end of twenty-fourteen. The Afghan government is supposed to lead the country's security beginning next year. President Obama talked about the change when he flew to Kabul this month to sign an agreement with the Afghan government.
NATO has identified a support level of four billion dollars a year for Afghanistan. Stephen Flanagan of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies says the question is who will pay it.
The United States has paid an increasing share of the costs of NATO operations. A year ago, Robert Gates, in his last major speech as defense secretary, criticized cuts in European defense spending. He warned of what he called "the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance" for the alliance.
The NATO summit will include France's new president. Francois Hollande was sworn in Tuesday as the first Socialist president in almost twenty years. In Chicago, Mr. Hollande will have to defend plans for an early French troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. He promised during his election campaign to remove troops by the end of this year. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy had announced plans to remove them by the end of twenty-thirteen.
Experts say a good example of sharing responsibility was the intervention last year in the Libyan conflict. The Europeans took a leading military role. But they needed a lot of help.
